Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB) kills more people annually than any other infectious disease besides HIV, roughly three million people per year worldwide (Koebler, 2013). TB is an infectious disease that is created by bacteria known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and it primarily affects the lungs. Robert Koch, a German physician was the first person to isolate the disease in 1882. He later went on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for its discovery. Back in the ancient times of the pharaohs this respiratory disease was disabling and the cause of much death (TB facts, 2013). Physicians have more than ten drugs to choose from when treating this disease. However, just like most bacterial diseases, TB has been evolving over the years to fend off many of the effective antibiotics, thus making it harder to treat. The evolution of drug-resistant tuberculosis is a serious, as yet unsolved, public-health problem. It is particularly troubling in Southeast Asia, the countries of the former Soviet Union, Africa, and in heavy prison populations. The reasons for development of drug-resistant strains of TB are due in large part to poor patient compliance, lack of detection of resistant strains, and unavailable treatment (Zelman, 2010).
Claims
The CDC first reported earlier this year about several cases of totally drug-resistant tuberculosis being found in South Africa, and that the disease is virtually untreatable. In Jason Koebler’s article entitled, “Doctors Struggling to Fight Totally Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis in South Africa”, he highlights one of these types of cases. Koebler writes of a South African physician, Uvistra Naidoo, who contracted the disease in the pediatric clinic which he had been working. Naidoo had some minor flu like symptoms and chest pains, but was still able to enjoy his running (he had always been an avid runner) so he really didn’t think anything was amiss. It wasn’t till his family members noticed that he had lost more than 30 pounds that Naidoo went in for an X-ray. The X-ray showed that his entire right lung was filled with fluid, and within weeks of his X-ray Naidoo was on his deathbed. His body was not responding to the most commonly prescribed antibiotics for treating TB. Eventually a treatment regimen was found that helped Naidoo, however he was still in and out of the hospital for three years. “The TB doesn’t feel like its killing you, but the drugs given for treatment do,” stated Naidoo (Koebler, 2013, p.1). In one of South Africa’s most popular TB clinics, King George V Hospital, the 200 beds are always full with a four to six week waiting list for new patients. Since his battle with TB, Naidoo has been extremely committed in his efforts to help the Johns Hopkins Center for TB Research help combat these extreme cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis. The most important aspect in battling TB is to cure the patient the first time around, because research proves that every time a patient has to get treated for the disease again, the risk of amplifying its resistance (Koebler, 2013).

Individuals become infected with TB when they inhale tiny particles of infected sputum from the air. These bacteria get into the air when an individual who is already carrying the infection coughs, sneezes, or talks. The people within close proximity can potentially breathe the bacteria in. Often there is a misconception that TB can be contracted by touching the clothes of someone infected, or even by shaking their hands, this however is very untrue (TB facts, 2013).

Perspective

The whole drug-resistant tuberculosis is not just a South African problem, an outbreak of multi-drug-resistant (MDR) occurred in the early 90’s in a New York hospital. A total of 32 patients caught the MDR during the course of a few months and out of those 32 patients, 29 died. Eventually the outbreak was controlled, but over the course of the last eight years some more than 100 cases of MDR have been detected in the