To end King's Evil, we must end poverty
Geoffrey Blain
Issue date: 11/18/08 Section: Health
Can you name the disease that infects one per cent of the world's population each year? How about the one that never sickens 90 to 95 per cent of the people it touches?
It starts with a cough and then leads to chest pain and blood in the patient's saliva. Eventually, the infected person will experience chronic symptoms such as fatigue, weight loss, loss of appetite and a fever. In far too many cases, it becomes fatal.
It's called tuberculosis, and though it is known by a host of other titles like White Plague, Pott's Disease, King's Evil and the Plague of the Poor, it is most often referred to by its abbreviation, TB.
Although TB can almost always be treated when proper medical care is available, it remains a very large health threat. One reason is that, unfortunately, proper health care is often not available where the disease is most rampant. Another is that TB is among the most contagious of bacteria.
Tuberculosis spreads through the air, which means infected individuals simply need to cough, sneeze or even talk to spread the disease around them. All it takes is to breathe in the infected air to catch TB.
Once thought to have been subjugated globally, TB is still wreaking havoc around the world, including some native communities in Canada. Documentation of TB goes back as far as ancient Greece, where it was identified as "phthisis", the almost always fatal and most common disease of the time.
It wasn't until 1546 that people began to realize TB was contagious and it wasn't until 1882 that Nobel Prize winner, Robert Koch, identified the tuberculosis bacillus, the germ TB derives from.
Today, tuberculosis is a major issue for health professionals. The World Health Organization's (WHO) Global Plan to Stop TB is developing strategies to implement proper care in areas where tuberculosis is common such as sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe. WHO is hoping to cut the number of deaths resulting from TB in half by 2015 and save 14 million people along the way.
It starts with a cough and then leads to chest pain and blood in the patient's saliva. Eventually, the infected person will experience chronic symptoms such as fatigue, weight loss, loss of appetite and a fever. In far too many cases, it becomes fatal.
It's called tuberculosis, and though it is known by a host of other titles like White Plague, Pott's Disease, King's Evil and the Plague of the Poor, it is most often referred to by its abbreviation, TB.
Although TB can almost always be treated when proper medical care is available, it remains a very large health threat. One reason is that, unfortunately, proper health care is often not available where the disease is most rampant. Another is that TB is among the most contagious of bacteria.
Tuberculosis spreads through the air, which means infected individuals simply need to cough, sneeze or even talk to spread the disease around them. All it takes is to breathe in the infected air to catch TB.
Once thought to have been subjugated globally, TB is still wreaking havoc around the world, including some native communities in Canada. Documentation of TB goes back as far as ancient Greece, where it was identified as "phthisis", the almost always fatal and most common disease of the time.
It wasn't until 1546 that people began to realize TB was contagious and it wasn't until 1882 that Nobel Prize winner, Robert Koch, identified the tuberculosis bacillus, the germ TB derives from.
Today, tuberculosis is a major issue for health professionals. The World Health Organization's (WHO) Global Plan to Stop TB is developing strategies to implement proper care in areas where tuberculosis is common such as sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe. WHO is hoping to cut the number of deaths resulting from TB in half by 2015 and save 14 million people along the way.
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posted 11/20/08 @ 4:53 AM EST
I had not heard much about TB so I did not know it was such a big problem in the world. Poverty in the world is still a huge problem. Maybe the U.S. should buy some of these countries. (Continued…)
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