Health Editor’s Note: This article, taken from The Guardian U.K., alerts to the dangers of the world-wide disease of tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB, TB) which is an infectious disease that is spread by someone who has the active TB disease. The mere acts of coughing, sneezing, spitting, and even speaking can spread the bacteria. In other words it is spread through the air which makes it highly contagious.
Usually TB affects the lungs but can affect other areas of the body; pleura (covering of the lungs), central nervous system (TB meningitis), lymphatic system (neck), bones and joints (Pott disease of the spine), genitourinary system, and miliary (widespread form of TB outside the lungs). Symptoms of having TB are night sweats, weight loss (where the disease received the name of “consumption”), and/or chronic coughing with production of blood tinged sputum. TB has been around since ancient times and shows no signs of disappearing. There is no vaccine for TB. There are tests that can be performed to show if a person has been exposed to the bacterium and of course lung x-rays are performed.
Active TB infections are seen in those with immunocompromised body systems due to having HIV, AIDS, on medications to suppress the immune system, on chemotherapy, and in those who smoke. TB is the number one cause of infectious disease deaths. As if 2016, one fourth of the world’s population was thought to be infected with TB. That translates to 10 million cases of active TB with 1.3 million deaths. Most of the deaths occur in developing countries (as usual the poor mean little to the rest of the world and are marginalized and particularly susceptible due to overcrowding and malnutrition), while Indonesia, Pakistan, India, China, and the Philippines make up the other 50 per cent. Those in prisons, high-risk ethnic minorities, in homeless shelters, children exposed to TB positive individuals, health care workers, who have chronic lung diseases, all have an increased chance of contracting TB. Anyone who smokes has double the chance to become TB positive.
Tuberculosis is a potential medical threat to all of the world’s population….Carol
Are we finally waking up to the threat from the world’s deadliest infectious disease?
By Nick Herbert MP, co-chairman of the Global TB Caucus
The UN’s first High-Level Meeting on tuberculosis is a positive step – the way TB has been neglected is a scandal
Patients waiting to be tested for TB in Monrovia, Liberia. ‘Why have global leaders been so slow to react? Because TB is a disease of the poor.’
Patients waiting to be tested for TB in Monrovia, Liberia. ‘Why have global leaders been so slow to react? Because TB is a disease of the poor.’ Photograph: SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Imagine if the World Health Organization announced that a new, highly infectious airborne disease would claim 1.6 million lives over the next year. With no vaccine and a lengthy treatment regimen, the development of lethal, drug-resistant strains of the bug would be a serious risk. Of course, the world’s leaders would be galvanised into action immediately.
This is not really fiction, however. It describes a disease that is as old as humankind: tuberculosis.
In the 19th century, “consumption” was the leading cause of death in the west. The combination of better housing and Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery of antibiotics in 1928 transformed the situation. The world believed TB was beaten.
Fighting the world’s deadliest infectious disease: how to tackle TB
But it was never eradicated, and in the 1980s TB flared up again, on the back of the Aids epidemic. Striking opportunistically when the body’s resistance is low, it is the most common cause of death among people with Aids. TB was declared a Global Health Emergency in 1993. In the 25 years since then, nearly 50 million people have died. Today TB kills more people than Aids and malaria combined: it is the world’s deadliest infectious disease.
Why have global leaders been so slow to react? Because TB is a disease of the poor. Until recently, no new medicines for TB treatment had been approved for over 40 years. The bug is still treated with antibiotics, which are taken over a period of months, and vaccine development has been critically underfunded.
The Sustainable Development Goals agreed by the world’s leaders four years ago commit to ending the Aids, malaria and TB epidemics by 2030. Yet at the current rate of progress TB will not be beaten for over a century.
The Global Fund was set up to fight TB as well as malaria and Aids, and it provides two-thirds of all international financing for tuberculosis, yet the share of TB spend within the fund is disproportionately low. Doctors know how to treat TB: we’re just refusing to pay for it. This isn’t a medical problem – it’s a shameful political failure.
Today the United Nations will convene the first High-Level Meeting on TB, which will be attended by heads of state or government. The draft declaration calls for an “urgent global response” and reaffirms the commitment to end the epidemic by 2030. There are three reasons why it is imperative to act now. First, the humanitarian case. It is scandalous that 30 million people will die needlessly over the next 15 years when the disease has been easily and cheaply curable for over half a century. As progress has been made in fighting Aids and malaria, the failure to tackle TB has been revealed in plain sight. Our consciences should not allow that to stand.
The second reason to act is economic. Millions of sick people are an impediment to economic development in some of the world’s poorest countries. The failure to tackle TB by 2030 will cost the global economy $1 trillion. TB treatments are amongst the most cost-effective health interventions, and a relatively small boost in research and development to fight the disease could save billions of dollars in later years.
New tuberculosis treatment could help tackle global epidemic
The third reason to act is to ensure global health security. Drug-resistant tuberculosis accounts for one-third of deaths due to antimicrobial resistance globally. As the UN declaration this week notes, if we fail to address this, “the grave individual and public health risks posed by multidrug-resistant tuberculosis are cause for alarm”. Only a quarter of multidrug-resistant TB cases are being diagnosed and notified. The already heavy economic toll of TB would pale by comparison with the cost of unchecked drug resistance. The UN declaration says all the right things. Resources should be increased, public health systems strengthened, and research and development boosted. Significantly, it includes a new commitment to the rapid scaling up of access to testing, so that at least 40 million people will be diagnosed and treated by 2022. Currently one in three people with the disease – and 71% of people with drug-resistant TB – are “missing”. If the new treatment target is met it will at last break the back of the epidemic.
But will it be met? Such ambitious proposals will be achieved only if every country delivers its share of the target. The key question will be how the declaration is translated into action. There is no mechanism to hold leaders to account for delivering on the promises, beyond the existing framework set by the World Health Organisation. Frankly, if that was effective we would not be so off track now.
As little as two years ago TB simply wasn’t on the political radar. It has risen rapidly up the agenda since then, with declarations at the G7 and G20, and a summit of health ministers in Moscow last year. The announcement by the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, earlier this year of an ambitious new plan to beat TB in his country was seen as a milestone in the fight. This week’s UN meeting has the potential to be a turning point.
Thirty heads of government will attend the meeting – but many countries will merely send a minister. Europe will be particularly poorly represented. Of course, global leaders face many other challenges, but a disease that is killing more than 4,000 people a day should no longer be ignored.
Still, every country will be signed up, so what will matter is what governments actually do when the ink on the declaration is dry. As the failure of the declaration of TB as a global health emergency a quarter of a century ago has shown us, words are not enough. We must demand that governments translate today’s promises into action.
Carol graduated from Riverside White Cross School of Nursing in Columbus, Ohio and received her diploma as a registered nurse. She attended Bowling Green State University where she received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History and Literature. She attended the University of Toledo, College of Nursing, and received a Master’s of Nursing Science Degree as an Educator.
She has traveled extensively, is a photographer, and writes on medical issues. Carol has three children RJ, Katherine, and Stephen – one daughter-in-law; Katie – two granddaughters; Isabella Marianna and Zoe Olivia – and one grandson, Alexander Paul. She also shares her life with her husband Gordon Duff, many cats, and two rescues.
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