Russia is ready to help the United States fight outbreaks of infectious diseases such as measles, its health agency said Tuesday, after Washington offered help following plague reports in Russia.
“The Russian Federation is ready to assist the US in combating infectious disease outbreaks,” consumer and health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said in a statement.
Russia, it stressed, “possesses extensive practical and scientific experience in ensuring epidemiological well-being, both domestically and internationally”.
It said Russia was “prepared to provide the US side with specialists, laboratory equipment and highly effective diagnostic and preventive tools”, to help address a range of worrying infectious disease outbreaks.
Among other things, it highlighted a “significantly worsened” measles situation in three US states, and a “fatal case of plague” recorded in New Mexico in June.
“The situation regarding dangerous infectious diseases remains unstable,” the statement said, also alleging that a outbreaks of typhus and Legionnaires’ disease had been reported.
US President Donald Trump said on Monday his country was prepared to help “as much as we can” after reports that a laboratory technician died of plague in Siberia’s Irkutsk region.
Russian authorities have denied that they were imposing special anti-plague measures, stressing that postmortem tests had not detected the disease.
