You probably haven\u2019t heard much about tuberculosis, or TB.\u00a0 Maybe you remember that Nicole Kidman\u2019s character Satine in Moulin Rouge died from TB.\u00a0 Or you remember Katerina Ivanova in Dostoevsky\u2019s Crime and Punishment<\/i>.\u00a0 But you probably don\u2019t personally know anyone with the disease.<\/p>\n
But the fact is, TB is everywhere.\u00a0 Epidemiologists estimate that 2.3 billion people in the world are infected with TB.\u00a0 Let that sink in for a minute.\u00a0 Two point three billion.\u00a0 Fully one-third of the world\u2019s 7 billion population.<\/p>\n
Why have you not heard much about it then?\u00a0 Well, because in the US, less than 1% of the population has been infected with TB.<\/p>\n
The thing is, TB is a disease of the developing world.\u00a0 Every year, 9 million new people are diagnosed with TB disease \u2013 and 98% of them live in the developing world.\u00a0 Nelson Mandela said, \u201cThe world has made defeating AIDS a top priority.\u00a0 This is a blessing.\u00a0 But TB remains ignored. \u2026We can\u2019t fight AIDS unless we do much more to fight TB as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the emergency room in Ethiopia, I see TB every single day.\u00a0 Literally.\u00a0 Last week, I saw a woman come in with abdominal pain who had lost a fourth of her body weight.\u00a0 She looked like a skeleton.\u00a0 Her abdomen was rigid and tender, and it turned out she had TB infection of the intestines.\u00a0 Another day, I saw an adolescent with back pain because TB had destroyed his spine (we call this Pott\u2019s disease).<\/p>\n
This is the kind of stuff that you only read about in textbooks in America.\u00a0 But in Africa, it is deadly real.\u00a0 Ethiopia is one of the \u201chigh burden\u201d countries for TB \u2013 22 countries which make up 82% of the entire world\u2019s cases . \u00a0In Ethiopia, there are 280,000 new cases of TB diagnosed every year.\u00a0 Epidemiologists call this \u201cincidence\u201d.\u00a0 (By contrast, in the US, there are about 10,000 new cases of TB every year).\u00a0 \u00a0The Millennium Development Goals are seeking to reduce TB in countries like Ethiopia.\u00a0 But the political will is lacking.\u00a0 There are few high profile celebrities with TB.\u00a0\u00a0 Research dollars that go toward TB are dwarfed by that of HIV.\u00a0 Though we have countless new drugs for HIV, we have NO NEW DRUGS to treat TB.<\/p>\n
What can we do to fight TB?\u00a0 For centuries, the only way to diagnose it has been by looking at someone\u2019s sputum under a microscope.\u00a0 And this only catches TB 50% of the time!\u00a0 (In contrast, the test for HIV is in the blood, and is 99% accurate at detecting the disease).\u00a0 Finally, in recent years, a device has been developed that can confirm TB.\u00a0 It is called the GeneXpert, and we hope to get one here at Soddo Christian Hospital.<\/p>\n