World Tuberculosis Day: The ancient disease that still takes 4,000 lives a day
World Tuberculosis Day: The ancient disease that still takes 4,000 lives a day
CNN Report
Each year, March 24 marks World Tuberculosis Day. One day in the year when the world’s lens will focus on the fact that almost 4,000 people globally die every day as a result of this preventable, curable disease.
An ancient disease that has claimed many millions of lives, tuberculosis continues to wreak havoc on public health in many countries in this century.
Fast forward to recent decades and another pandemic has claimed more than 30 million, mostly young lives and today at least another 30 million people live with HIV — an incurable, although treatable infection.
Inextricably linked by the interactions at the level of the host immune system, there are many similarities in these two epidemics. Both diseases are reliant on recognition of possible infection prior to the onset of symptoms, yet both are engulfed by crippling stigmatization undermining that self-identification, and both require long periods of adherent pill-taking to control or cure disease.
TB facts:
– A person infected with TB disease shows signs of symptoms and usually feels ill.
– Symptoms include coughing up blood, fever, chills, night sweats, shortness of breath, chest pains, loss of appetite, weight loss, and fatigue.
– It is possible to spread the TB bacteria from the infected person to others.
– A skin or blood test will indicate if a person has been infected with the bacteria.
– Treatment with antibiotics for 4-9 months is required to treat active TB disease.
– Persons with a weak immune system, such as those with HIV or diabetes, are more prone to catching the TB disease.
– TB is a leading cause of death for people infected with HIV.
This becomes especially important but increasingly difficult as the impact of the disease lifts and the patient feels better.
