Instead of the swine flu…

…here is what Kazakhstan’s citizens should really be worrying about.  I’ve been meaning to blog this for a while.  Certainly all Peace Corps Volunteers and anyone else in Kazakhstan that might regularly read this blog should be made aware of the threat of hemorrhagic fever.  It’s a tick-born disease that is extremely dangerous in its severe form.  It’s also referred to as the Congo-Crimea Fever, and it’s also been found in Iran, showing what a long way this disease has travelled from the Congo, where it was first reported.

I can’t speak to the current state of news awareness in Kazakhstan, but when that story above was running, I heard nothing of this in the local Kazakh media.  My girlfriend and I were both in Kazakhstan in August, and the only disease anyone worried about was swine flu.  Us coming from the States, my girlfriend’s host-family in Kazakhstan, with whom she had previously spent three years with as a Peace Corps Volunteer, expressed concern about the possibility of our carrying the disease.  Similar to the media craziness in the states back in the spring, there is very little constructive thinking going on, and preventative measures are being stepped up.  Even though swine flu has proven so far to be actually less dangerous than the yearly flu strains, the media is treating the disease like impending doom, and people are apparently sporting fashionable face masks in Semey…

This post was written by...

Michael Hancock-Parmer – author of 153 posts on Registan.net.

Michael earned an MA in Central Eurasian Studies in 2011 and remains a student at Indiana University pursuing a dual PhD in Russian History and Central Eurasian Studies. He served 6 months in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan in 2005. After the events in Andijan and the subsequent closure of the program, he served 2 years in southern Kazakhstan, returning to the Midwest in 2007. His general area of interest is on post-Timur Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, centered on the Syr Darya river valley.