Tuberculosis

Deepika Dixit
Nov 5 · 2 min read

Did you know that tuberculosis, also known as Tb, is the world’s most infectious disease?

⅓ of the world’s population is infected by this deadly infection. Each year, nearly 9 million people in the world become sick with TB and almost 1.5 million people die.

So what makes TB the world’s most infectious killer?

So why is TB so difficult to eradicate?

Numbers released by the World Health Organisation show how pervasive TB still is. The agency reports that in the year 2018, there were 10 million new cases of TB world-wide. In addition, there are 580,000 cases of drug-resistant TB. After decades of decline, the incidence of TB has leveled off in the past few years. A major reason is the emergence of drug resistant strains.

TB as an organism is a tough customer. Most pathogens require hundreds, even thousands of organisms to start an infection. TB requires only 10 or even fewer. It is one of the most successful pathogens in history. It is very effective once it gets into a body.

TB can take a long time to manifest. It can be several months after the initial infection before the disease becomes evident in lab tests. Meanwhile, a person who is unaware that they are infected, can pass the airborne disease along to others without knowing it.

The diagnostic lab tests are low-tech and simple and can thus be used in a lot of countries. However, many times it takes one to two weeks to get results. There is a need for low-cost point-of-care diagnostic tests so a patient can be given medication before they leave the doctor’s office.

Once identified, the disease can be treated. This is easier said than done. First, access to treatment can be difficult in some developing countries. In addition, people with TB need to take daily medication for six to nine months. Sometimes, they stop taking the drugs when they start to feel better. That’s when a drug resistant strain can develop.This makes TB one of the world’s most effective killers. Efforts towards education about the disease, better access to resources, more efficient diagnostic tests, and shorter-term treatments are required to combat this deadly disease.

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