Word: drugging
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...doesn't have to be this way. TB is an entirely preventable and treatable disease. And the drug-resistant strains beginning to emerge in Africa, Russia, China and India, say experts, are epidemics of our own making. Unlike H.I.V., the tubercle bacillus succumbs to powerful medications. But the drugs are not where they need to be, and when they are, spotty monitoring and poor health infrastructure make it hard to ensure that patients take the daily pills or frequent injections they must receive for six months to eradicate the infection. Stopping treatment too early allows the small population of drug...
...biggest threat, XDR TB, is currently resistant to the most potent classes of first- and second-line anti-TB drugs available - and there is no third line of pharmaceutical defense. While some promising candidates are being tested, even if they prove effective, they will not be available for at least five more years. There is also no easy way to detect drug-resistant strains of TB; current sputum-based screens can take anywhere from two weeks to two months, during which time doctors protectively place infected patients on first-line drugs too weak to battle the aggressive strain effectively rather...
...response, the World Health Organization (WHO) in June recommended widespread use of a new, faster test that can screen for drug-resistant TB in the blood in one or two days. But it requires sophisticated lab facilities for amplifying genes that are beyond the limited resources of most developing nations. "It will be very difficult to bring expensive technologies, machines and trained technicians on a wider scale," predicts Dr. Arvinder Pal Gill, district TB officer in Moga, in India's Punjab region. In addition, the test can detect only MDR TB, not the emerging XDR strains. But both...
...past five months, Jim has been traveling around the world to document the spread of an ancient disease that has a deadly new face: extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). The extraordinary pictures in this week's issue are the foundation for a unique collaboration with TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design)--an organization devoted to "ideas worth spreading." Last year Jim won the TED prize--a grant of $100,000 and his "wish to change the world." That wish was to create a global-awareness movement around XDR-TB. Beginning Oct. 3, TED will unveil multimedia projects in major cities around...
...disease was diagnosed in 9.2 million more people, almost exclusively in the developing world, and 1.7 million people died from it. More alarming is a growing subset of TB cases, estimated at half a million, that are resistant to more than one of the handful of anti-TB drugs. While they still make up only 5% of the total annual TB burden, these cases of multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant TB are mushrooming, fueled by the surge in AIDS and by health-care systems that have ignored the threat of TB for too long...