The Comeback of TB

HOW THE OLD THREAT CAME BACK AS A NEW THREAT:

In the early 1900’s and throughout the industrial revolution, the number one leading cause of d

MULTI-DRUG RESISTANCE, A MAN-MADE COSTLY PROBLEM:

When other areas cannot afford the necessary drugs for such a contagious and severe disease this only allows additional spreading and additional immunities to drugs when they are received but then not taken properly due to lack of follow-ups and proper education. Russia and the Ivory Coast are hot spots for TB. When incidence rates there soared above 5% in 2000, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) became alarmed when they realized that this was seriously becoming a potential threat to national security (Roberts, 50).

By 1985 TB cases began to climb again. This time, instead of the disease killing all types of individuals, this new epidemic seems to affect certain portions of populations. Areas that are highly populated, have large amounts of ethnic minorities, people who travel extensively, those with HIV and those not born in the US are at higher risk to TB today.

These findings show the need to increase control efforts in high-risk populations for active case findings and to assure the completion of therapy. Second-line drugs will need to be introduced to increase the cure rates in groups near prisons, but this can only happen when stricter protocols are introduced and training among health officials in the area increases. Priority must be given to prevention not the management. It is essential for the health officials to never prescribe solely one drug for a TB when they are residing in a high-risk area for MDR-TB. Officials need to make sure that patients are adhering to the treatment, and if they aren’t those who abscond from treatment need to be identified as early as possible. Money and drugs aren’t the only answers to the problem. The doctors will need to be highly aware and alert so that they will vigilantly treat each case, as it should be.

Health officials have a perplexing dilemma on their hands. There aren’t any new antibiotics currently on the drawing board to be released anytime soon and there hasn’t been any additional development in this area for the past 25 years. Mainly this is because the efforts to make stronger antibiotics for TB had gone by the wayside in the past few decades because many companies felt that the need for these drugs wasn’t going to become a health issue. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) admits that they let their guard down too soon. Despite this, since the 1980’s two to three million people in the world have been dying of TB each year. Each infected person transmits the disease to 15-20 people per year. Now that TB is a health issue, will technology bail us out in time? Will the right drugs emerge for us, or will other routes need to be taken? What will those other routes be? This re-emerging disease is once again consuming people and the rates of active TB continue to soar. Tuberculosis now kills “more than any other infectious disease except AIDS” (Roberts, 50).

Basically what is happening is that those who have TB but don’t have a very severe case aren’t getting the treatment until they are in dire need of medical attention, at which point they have already infected many other people. One drawback to this cohort study is that it has some selection bias, because in order to get picked to participate officials must feel the patient is desperate enough to need the treatment to be part of the study. The DOTS programs major drawback is that it needs to be able to improve the ability to isolate those patients who are high profile. The methods and choices used for treatment need to be heavily improved before any second- or third-line drugs are used. Currently the use of first-line drugs is simply removing the drug sensitive strains and leaving behind the more dangerous and resistant strains in patients who now additionally have cavitary disease, oedema or a Body Mass Index (BMI) of less than 16. No matter how high the compliance is in these individuals, there is sadly little hope for them at this point

Some topics in this essay:
MDR TB, RESEARCH DESIGN, FINDINGS CONCLUSION, AIDS TB, COSTLY TB, Agency CIA, Soviet Union, Robert Koch, Penitentiary Hospital, BREAKING CODE, near prison, drug sensitive, cohort study, patients near prison, aids tb, prison population, drug resistant, hiv positive, first-line drugs, research design, health officials, population near prison, multi-drug resistant mdr, economic crisis political, crisis political turmoil,