Chechnya women suffer from mysterious illness that includes seizures

Young girls in war-ravaged Chechnya are complaining of a mystery illness, stoking suspicions that Russia has used the republic as a testing and dumping ground for nerve gas and other poisons.
Yesterday, it was reported that four women and two teenage girls have been taken to hospital with the symptoms, bringing the number of people to fall ill with the condition since mid-December to almost 100.

The symptoms are extreme: blackouts, fits, breathing problems, nosebleeds, crazed laughter and hallucinations.

Some of the girls who have been afflicted have had prolonged violent fits and spasms up to 25 times a day and have become so disorientated that they could not recognise their own parents.
The authorities and some, but not all, of the medical professionals who have studied the problem have concluded that the mainly female victims are suffering from "mass hysteria". A psychological breakdown, prompted by more than a decade of separatist war which they argue has led to chronic stress, is only now beginning to manifest itself, aggravated by Chechnya's poverty, extreme hopelessness and militarisation.

But the children's parents and some of the doctors who originally treated the girls beg to differ. They believe a cover-up is under way and are convinced that the symptoms have been caused by chemical weapons allegedly used or stored by both sides in the brutal conflict.

The problem came to the authorities' attention on 16 December when schoolgirls in several villages lost consciousness, the prelude to what turned out to be an unending succession of fits and trauma. A handful of boys fell sick too but the vast majority of sufferers were girls or female teachers from at least five different schools.

The authorities' first reaction was to say that they thought the victims had been poisoned and a criminal investigation was opened. The schools were closed pending an inquiry and it was suggested that the lavatories were likely to be the prime source of the poisoning and that the schools' water supply had somehow become contaminated.

That investigation was swiftly dropped, however, along with the poison theory, when a series of specialists, some of whom had flown in from Moscow, said the disorder was psychological. The doctors blamed the media for triggering more cases of the condition with alarmist reports.
Treatment for what is apparently a psychological disorder such as intensive music therapy has proved largely ineffective though. In fact, the only medical success in treating the condition is shrouded in mystery.

A group of the worst sufferers were taken to a hospital outside Chechnya where doctors injected them with substances that alleviated many of the worst symptoms but which caused the girls to put on huge amounts of weight. The doctors have not said what was in the syringes.

Blood samples from five of the sufferers have also revealed the inexplicable presence of ethylene glycol, a toxic substance used in anti-freeze.

Moscow has remained silent. Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian independent journalist specialising in Chechnya, is convinced that Moscow has used the republic as a weapons laboratory.

"It is now 2006. Behind us are 11 years of war with short breaks for clearing mines and unexploded shells," she wrote in the bi-weekly Novaya Gazeta. "But the ideology remains: as before, people who have the misfortune to live in Chechnya are seen as biomaterial for experiments."