[Ip-health] Selgelid on TB

[Aidan Hollis]

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Michael Selgelid has an interesting article on TB in the Guardian, March 23.



[snip]

Though inexpensive cures have existed for decades, TB continues to kill 1.7
million people annually. It is the second leading infectious cause of
mortality -- a close runner-up to AIDS, which kills 2.1 million. One-third
of the world population is infected with latent TB, and 10% of these are
expected to develop active illness at some time in their lives. 95% of TB
cases and 98% of TB deaths occur in poor countries. Poverty leads to bad
nutrition, which weakens immune systems and makes TB infection more likely.
TB is also promoted by overcrowded living and working conditions, bad
sanitation and hygiene, and HIV/AIDS. When the poor do become infected, they
commonly lack access to even cheap medicines.

It might have been brought under control worldwide if medicines had been
more widely available in developing countries. In addition to causing untold
suffering and millions of unnecessary deaths, poor people's lack of access
to medicine is largely responsible for the emergence and spread of drug
resistant TB strains. The World Health Organization recently announced that
multi-drug resistant TB levels are higher than ever before. Especially
alarming are the new 'extreme' or 'extensively' drug resistant strains known
as XDR-TB, which has just reached Britain. These have been found in 45
countries already and are virtually untreatable. The upshot is that we have
returned to a situation analogous to the pre-antibiotic era. This is a
tragedy.



[snip]

For more, see:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_selgelid/2008/03/a_killer_we_lef
t_to_roam.html



Aidan Hollis



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