00:44, 15 December 2006

Children of Chechnya's Shelkovskoj District continue showing symptoms of unknown disease

On December 13, representatives of the "Civil Assistance" NGO and Society of Russian-Chechen Friendship made a joint visit to the village of Staroschedrinskaya of the Shelkovskoj District of the Chechen Republic. The aim was to clear the circumstances of a mass poisoning with undefined ethiology that burst out in the local school on September 23, 2005, and again on September 5, 2006.

A total of thirty-six out of seven hundred and eighty children resident in the village fell ill. Interestingly, eighteen were sick last year and eighteen more - this year. The age of the kids is from nine to thirteen. In both cases, the patients had similar symptoms.

The Russian-Chechen Information Agency has informed that all the infected children have same complaints.

The official diagnosis made by physicians to the victims of unknown disease runs as "pseudoasthmatic syndrome of psychogenic origin." However, as the "Caucasian Knot" has reported, many residents of Chechnya are still confident that the children's disease was caused by application of chemical warfare agents.