Her other activities included helping develop an iodine deficiency eradication project for Brest Oblast, assisting the U.S. military's effort to provide Belarus with hospital renovation funds, and working with NGO's to develop health programs. But her work took place against a frightening backdrop. The politics there are very scary. The KGB there is large and very active. There are militia dressed in fatigues on every corner in Minsk.
Alcohol abuse is a major problem.
Beer is also very popular, and the alcohol content is higher than in the U.S. Teens openly carry drinks on the street. There is very little knowledge of fluoride's benefit to children's teeth, she said, and there is a serious deficiency of iodine in the diet because the salt is not iodized. That such common public health interventions, not to mention concepts such as budgeting and cost-effectiveness, are absent in Belarus astonishes Simpson. One of Hitler's largest death camps, Trostenyets, where at least 250,000 people died, is located on the outskirts of Minsk. Then you add Chernobyl to that.