How Not to Fight Tuberculosis
Do we have to turn TB into a terrorist threat to give it the attention it deserves? Police in Durham, North Carolina jailed a man with an active case of tuberculosis who refused to take his anti-TB drugs. Everyone at the court hearing—including the judge—wore masks to keep from getting infected. The Centers for Disease Control says there are so many cases of latent TB infection around the globe that all immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for more than five years should be tested and, of course, treated if necessary. (Previously, doctors focused on immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for less than five years.)
More than one in three people worldwide harbors the TB bacillus. Most of them are not sick because their immune systems can keep the infection under control. Now researchers at the Pasteur Institute in France think they know why the body can't eliminate the bacillus—the TB germ hides out in the fat tissues of the body.
Meanwhile, a study in Lancet concludes that the epidemic of drug-resistant TB is much greater than global health experts had realized. That’s helping to fuel the emergence of extremely drug-resistant TB that’s been killing AIDS patients in southern Africa and elsewhere lately. And, according to this statement form the World Health Organization (.pdf), doctors are starting to worry that if XDR-TB gets a larger foothold in the U.S., it could be a "Trojan horse that will set back [the U.S.'s] ability to control TB for decades."
Despite all the alarming news, TB is still in the top ten of underreported stories in the mainstream media, according to a new report from Doctors Without Borders. Consider yourself warned.
—Christine Gorman
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Reader's Comments
A new program will help address worldwide concerns about TB and other diseases.
Emory University, in partnership with Finland’s National Public Health Institute, KTL (Kansanterveyslaitos), has received a five-year grant of nearly $20 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI).
IANPHI is an international alliance dedicated to optimizing public health service delivery and decision-making globally by improving public health infrastructure around the world
Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH, vice president for academic health affairs in Emory University’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center and former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is IANPHI president and principal investigator for the IANPHI grant.
“In our increasingly interconnected society, the public health issues of one country can quickly affect the entire world,” explains Dr. Koplan. “A global perspective is important not only in thinking about public health problems, but also in developing and disseminating public health solutions. The Gates Foundation grant will provide concrete tools for improving public health infrastructure and capacity internationally and establishing a global community for public health leadership and advocacy.”
The cornerstone of the IANPHI approach is a peer-assistance model for strengthening and enhancing national public health institutes, with an emphasis on low-resource countries without a national public health focus or with NPHIs in their early stages of development.
posted by: Sarah Goodwin | January 10, 2007
Extremely drug-resistant TB - or XDR-TB - is a major threat around the world. Last year, an outbreak in South Africa killed 52 of 53 patients infected, most in a matter of weeks. They were all HIV/AIDS demonstrating how this vicious airborne disease can set back important progress fighting HIV/AIDS.
RESULTS and other advocates are calling on Congress to include $300 million in emergency funding to fight XDR-TB in the upcoming supplemental spending bill. To get more information on how you as a citizen can help to stop TB and XDR-TB, visit www.results.org or email me at joliver@results.org
I would also like to thank TIME for giving some virtual "ink" to a very serious - and seriously underreported - problem both in the US and around the world.
Jove Oliver
RESULTS
joliver@results.org
posted by: Jove Oliver | January 12, 2007
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