MMRC: Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis
by Justin D. Long

Here's a disease that, according to the World Health Organization, presently infects more than one-third of our planet's population--and infects a new person every second. Over 70 million people are infected with tuberculosis each year; more than 8 million become sick, and 30 million could die from it sometime in the next decade. Tuberculosis is the leading infectious killer of youth and adults, the leading killer of women, the leading infectious killer of people with HIV/AIDS (30% of all HIV/AIDS deaths are a result of TB), and based on statistics probably creates more orphans than any other infectious disease. It is particularly prevalent in Asia, where more than 64% of the world's known TB cases exist.

In 1995, more people died of tuberculosis than in any other year in human history; TB now infects more people than any year previously. It kills more people than AIDS, malaria, and tropical diseases combined. Think about Ebola, dramatized in numerous books (including Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders"), and then think about this: for every person who died in 1995 from Ebola, 12,000 died of tuberculosis.

Perhaps the scariest scenario of all: TB becomes more difficult to control the longer it is allowed to exist. Drug-resistant strains of TB are emerging which could render the disease, at least for the present, incurable. It is possible that today up to 50 million people may have been infected with drug-resistant tuberculosis.

The World Health Organization declared a global tuberculosis emergency in 1993, hoping to draw attention to the severity of the epidemic. Since then, it has doubled its budget for fighting tuberculosis, and other NGOs have created new initiatives to join in the fight. Still, three years later we have yet to eliminate or even control the disease. Despite the fact that good things are being done, it is not yet enough.

There is a treatment, called DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment Short-Course) which can cure more than 85% of all tuberculosis patients for as little as $11 in the developing world. It has been used widely in the past five years, and where it has been used cure rates have doubled and drug-resistance is lower. Despite these gains, the program is not being implemented widely enough.

According to the WHO, lack of progress in 16 key countries (which together account for more than half the global incidence of tuberculosis) threatens global tuberculosis control: Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Aghanistan, Ethiopia, India, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan and Uganda. By contrast, TB is well under control in many parts of the world, using the DOTS strategy, including Bangladesh and half of China.

Fortunately, 10 of the 16 countries--Afghanistan, Iran, Mexico, Myanmar, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Sudan, Thailand and Uganda--have recently just begun to implement DOTS. It is to be hoped that these countries, and the other 6, will receive large-scale initiatives by non-governmental organizations (such as Christian humanitarian relief agencies) which will help them to implement the program.

"What is needed are people of power, influence and compassion who will help," says the WHO. Wouldn't it be a wonderful witness if these people came from Christian groups?