Tuberculosis - A Curable Killer

While nearly everyone knows about the damage and severity of the HIV virus, many people don’t know that Tuberculosis kills the second most people of any infectious disease according to the WHO. In 2011, nearly 10 million people contracted the disease, and 1.4 million died from it.  What’s shocking about tuberculosis is that we have very effective and fairly simple cure. Unfortunately in poorer countries no one can afford these medications, so many die from a completely treatable disease.

It’s known that disease hits poorer countries harder in practically every situation, but the trends in tuberculosis cases are even more glaring. 95% of all deaths from tuberculosis occur in developing countries. Tuberculosis is also a particularly dangerous disease for several reasons. Many people who have TB do not know they have it because the symptoms start out mild, but they remain contagious. Since TB is spread though the air, this makes it very easy to spread. Also, since TB lingers around many of the area where HIV is also prominent, this makes TB the number one killer of people with HIV, since their immune systems are so compromised. Another scary fact of TB, is that it affects young adults, usually the most active, productive and healthy people, unlike most diseases which target either younger or older people.

Clearly this is a case where funding should be spent to distribute medicine rather than educate, seeing as the disease is very easy to diagnose and cure. A diagnosis can be made in a single day with a simple test, while it takes 6 months of run-of-the-mill antibiotics to completely cure. From 1990 to 2011 the death toll from tuberculosis has dropped around 40%, which shows the world is on the right track for reducing the spread of the disease, and with more funding, it will probably become a very commonly treated disease.

Unlike some major diseases however, TB has virtually no impact or threat to developed countries. Unlike Aids, or SARS that can affect richer countries, TB has no effect on them since the drugs are so readily available in this country. This makes it less of a concern for people living in developed countries, since they don’t see any threat or impact from the disease. It’s easier to get people scared of diseases we don’t have cures for that pose a transnational threat, but TB just doesn’t have the impact other diseases do, and therefore doesn’t receive the same attention as others.

I firmly believe that it is not incredibly difficult to turn tuberculosis into a disease that is no longer feared or incredibly lethal. The disease affects weak states at a shockingly higher rate, and I think with outside involvement from other countries they can easily and effectively eliminate this as a massive killer. Right now the drugs are so scarce in some countries, many in sub-Saharan Africa, that drugs are stolen or intercepted by gangs and militias, who then hoard the drugs and either hold them hostage or sell them off for ridiculous prices. This also needs to be stopped. In a case where the only problem is giving sick people known, effective medicine, it’s sad to see so many people die in such a preventable manner.