Residents suspect uranium mine
Doctors are equally mystified . Sleepy patients have been sent to hospitals in the capital Astana for tests but to no avail , and the Kazakh agency Tengrinews reported that deputy prime minister Berdibek Saparbaev had turned to the international medical community for support .
Other local reports speculated that scientists from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in America had sent specialists in to the area . The centre did not reply to a request to confirm if this was the case .
Residents suspect uranium mine
In the absence of hard scientific facts , many residents are convinced they know the source of the problem : the disused Soviet‐era uranium mine on the village ’ s doorstep .
“ We ’ ve been thinking it was radiation ,” says Tatyana Shumilina . “ We have a uranium mine here ,” although it has been “ a ruin for years .”
“ We are all in fear of falling asleep ”
The Krasnogorskiy mine , attached to the village of Kalachi , was once home to the miners dispatched from Russia and across the Soviet Union to extract uranium – used to power Soviet nuclear weapons and energy plants .
Krasnogorskiy is now a ghost site , gradually abandoned after the mine closed in the 1990s . Today only several dozen families remain , their homes intact but interspersed amongst desolate apartment blocks collapsing into the soil . But none of these families are thought to