Russia's chief sanitary doctor warned of outbreaks of flu and intestinal viruses in the next few months and urged people to fight the illnesses by getting more sleep and quitting smoking.
Gennady Onishchenko, head of the Federal Consumer Protection Service, said Russia would be caught in a flu epidemic in September and October that might include the H1N1 virus, or swine flu.
The virus has killed 16,900 people around the world, including several in Russia, and sickened many others since surfacing in April 2009.
In Russia, people should "prepare seriously and with a feeling of full responsibility" for the flu outbreak, Onishchenko said at a news conference, Interfax reported.
Onishchenko called on people to take vitamins, quit drinking and smoking, get seven to nine hours of sleep every night and lead a healthy lifestyle to lower the risk of catching flu.
Onishchenko also predicted an outbreak of intestinal viruses that affect the central nervous system in the summer. One of the intestinal viruses is polio.
Russia this month confirmed its first polio death in years when a man died in the Sverdlovsk region. Several infants have also been diagnosed with polio after arriving with their parents from Tajikistan, which is caught in a polio epidemic.
Onishchenko also said 25,000 new HIV cases were registered in Russia in the first five months of 2010. He did not give any comparative figures.
About 550,000 HIV cases have been registered in Russia since 1987, although health experts believe that the actual number of infected people tops 1 million.
Onishchenko, meanwhile, said cigarette prices should be increased to reduce smoking and took a jab at foreign tobacco companies.
"Today Russia makes 400 billion cigarettes," he said. "There is not a single tobacco bush growing in Russia. All this is a credit to the North American business that came to our country in the 1990s and bought the entire tobacco industry."
Onishchenko said foreign companies were producing "infinite quantities of tobacco" in Russia after being attracted here by a cheap work force, developed infrastructure and a "population, particularly women, hooked on tobacco."
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