According to an article by Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, and Ken Alibek of Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan, published Tuesday in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, Central Asia “continues to suffer from a post-Soviet economic breakdown that may have contributed to a re-emergence of several NTDs in the area, especially among its most economically disadvantaged groups,” a PLoS press release states. According to the release, “[t]he five mostly landlocked Central Asian countries created after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — became increasingly vulnerable to NTDs due to a deterioration of health care services and infrastructure” (9/27).