Mysterious Disease In Kazakhstan Resembles Plot Of X-Files Series

The residents of the Kazakh village of Kalachi are racking with a mysterious disease that could not be explained by a wide range of specialists in medicine and many other specialized fields, Kazinform has learnt from Trend.az.

The villagers complain of severe fatigue and constant desire to sleep. They can suddenly fall asleep in the most unexpected places – at work, at school, in the street – and sleep for several days. Nobody and nothing can wake them up. And after waking up some of them lose memory, have hallucinations, and behave like in a dream.

The first case of the manifestation of this sleeping disease occurred in Kalachi in March 2013. And the disease breaks out once every few months. Ten percent of the village population exceeding 600 people has been infected with this disease.

The strangest thing that despite the authorities’ investigation with the involvement of local and invited specialists, the cause of the sickness remains a mystery. The scientists conducted thousands of experiments on soil, air and water in the village and the diseased patients, but the only thing they could say the people are quite healthy and the symptoms they experience do not fit into any of the known diseases.

Some kind of sleeping sickness, which also called “human African trypanosomiasis,” is a widespread tropical disease. But besides permanent desire to sleep the symptoms of this disease are different. Moreover African disease is spread by a bite of an infected tsetse fly living dozens of thousands kilometers far from Kazakhstan. And bacteriological and viral tests on Kalachi’s villagers have proved negative.
Local people are in despair. They think the authorities are hiding the truth about the disease and invent a number of fantastic explanations of its reasons from biology experiments conducted by western laboratories to aliens and God’s punishment.

However there are some versions which are more real at first glance. Kalachi is located in the vicinity of former Soviet secret uranium mining town Krasnogorsk, which was closed after Soviet Union’s collapse about 20 years ago. Some people associate abnormal sleep with the abandoned uranium mine. But scientists working at the scene say that the radiation level is normal across the village. Moreover the unfortunate Kalachi is the only village affected by this strange sickness and the dwellers of other settlements located nearby and even those who worked in the uranium mine for all their life are safe and sound.

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