"Virtually untreatable" tuberculosis

[unixronin]

Auntie Beeb reports that, in the continuing saga of antibiotic misuse and microbial antibiotic resistance, "virtually untreatable" tuberculosis has been encountered in the US, Western Europe, and Africa.

Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), TB strains resistant to two or more of the first-line anti-TB drugs, are already a growing concern.  The WHO estimates there are around 425,000 cases a year, mostly in India' China and the former Soviet Union.  They require treatment with second-line drugs which are more expensive, more toxic, and take longer to work.  Extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) strains are resistant not only to all of the first-line TB drugs, but to three or more of the six classes of second-line TB drugs.  Recent studies have found that 4% of MDR-TB cases in the US, 15% in South Korea, and 19% in the former Soviet Union met the XDR-TB criteria.

The article also notes that HIV-positive patients appear to be at particular risk.  52 of 53 XDR-TB patients found in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, died within 25 days; 44 of the 53 had been tested for HIV, and all 44 were positive.

Paul Sommerfeld of TB Alert said: "XDR TB is very serious - we are potentially getting close to a bacteria [sic] that we have no tools, no weapons against.

"What this means for the people in southern Africa, who are now becoming susceptible to this where it is appearing, is a likely death sentence.

"For the world as a whole it is potentially extremely worrying that this kind of resistance is appearing.  This is something that I am sure the WHO will be taking very seriously."

Comments

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

monsatan will come up with something to kill it!

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

The W.H.O. is a part of the organization that's done as much harm to Africa as the colonies.

What this could mean is

A) There will be prime real estate soon.
B) The first world won't have to worry about the third world if it's dead.
C) The ones that survive it will be immune but the first world will not.

None are very appealing.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yes, sometimes I think of the WHO and other instances of Western good intentions, and I find myself thinking of Daniel Webster's comment that "It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." Much of the history of the interaction between European-based cultures and those of the third world has been a history of Westerners thoughtlessly trying to impose parts of Western culture upon third-world cultures, with the best of intentions but with little to no actual thought or understanding of the interrelation between different parts of a culture, nor of the impact of dropping one single Westernism into a tribal culture without paying any attention to what it interacts with.

Between that and corporate/national greed, I think it's not unfair to say that the West has created a large part of the present misery in, among other places, equatorial and sub-Saharan Africa.