2008 Woodie Awards
On TB day, think of the sick
DI Editorial Board
Issue date: 3/24/08 Section: Opinions
This Opinions page recently lauded the Bush administration for its remarkable efforts in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa, noting the president's proposal to double funding for this initiative to $30 billion and our nation's multipronged attack aimed at combating the disease. While it's important to continue combating HIV/AIDS, it's critical that we not forget a dovetailing issue: tuberculosis.
The vulnerability that HIV creates in the human immune system opens the door for tuberculosis infection, and with rampant infection of both of these diseases in the developing world, it's no wonder that someone is newly infected with TB bacilli every second. According to the World Health Organization, HIV is the single most important factor contributing to the increase in the incidence of TB in Africa since 1990. Without treatment, each person with active TB disease will infect on average between 10 and 15 people every year. All told, one in every three people in the world is currently infected with the TB bacillus.
On March 17, the World Health Organization released the report "Global Tuberculosis Control 2008" which analyzed world TB data from 2006 (the most recent year such numbers were available) and compared it with similar numbers from 2001 to 2005. The report found that global progress in identifying and treating TB is slowing, even after taking population growth into account. According to the data, from 2001 to 2005, the average rate at which new TB cases were diagnosed was increasing 6 percent per year, but between 2005 and 2006, that rate of increase was cut in half, to 3 percent. The WHO's report places the blame for this decline on two significant factors, one of which is the HIV/TB link. The second is multi-drug-resistant TB, which was newly diagnosed 500,000 times alone in 2005.
While efforts to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS will help lower the numbers of those infected with TB, our knowledge, funds, and hard work must also be focused on TB itself, both as global community members and as a globe itself. Funding to combat TB spread is on the rise, even from developing nations, yet TB budgets are projected to remain flat in 2008 in almost all of the countries most heavily burdened by the disease.
It's our responsibility, as global citizens and Good Samaritans, to use our great wealth to aid in efforts against TB. We have an abundance of wealth - in time, in resources, in money. Today is World Tuberculosis Day, so take 10 minutes and educate yourself about the disease. Take $10 and donate at theglobalfund.org. Write your legislators and ask for action. HIV/AIDS and cancer are prevalent in our world, but TB is devastating in the rest of it, and we can do something about it, if we choose.
The vulnerability that HIV creates in the human immune system opens the door for tuberculosis infection, and with rampant infection of both of these diseases in the developing world, it's no wonder that someone is newly infected with TB bacilli every second. According to the World Health Organization, HIV is the single most important factor contributing to the increase in the incidence of TB in Africa since 1990. Without treatment, each person with active TB disease will infect on average between 10 and 15 people every year. All told, one in every three people in the world is currently infected with the TB bacillus.
On March 17, the World Health Organization released the report "Global Tuberculosis Control 2008" which analyzed world TB data from 2006 (the most recent year such numbers were available) and compared it with similar numbers from 2001 to 2005. The report found that global progress in identifying and treating TB is slowing, even after taking population growth into account. According to the data, from 2001 to 2005, the average rate at which new TB cases were diagnosed was increasing 6 percent per year, but between 2005 and 2006, that rate of increase was cut in half, to 3 percent. The WHO's report places the blame for this decline on two significant factors, one of which is the HIV/TB link. The second is multi-drug-resistant TB, which was newly diagnosed 500,000 times alone in 2005.
While efforts to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS will help lower the numbers of those infected with TB, our knowledge, funds, and hard work must also be focused on TB itself, both as global community members and as a globe itself. Funding to combat TB spread is on the rise, even from developing nations, yet TB budgets are projected to remain flat in 2008 in almost all of the countries most heavily burdened by the disease.
It's our responsibility, as global citizens and Good Samaritans, to use our great wealth to aid in efforts against TB. We have an abundance of wealth - in time, in resources, in money. Today is World Tuberculosis Day, so take 10 minutes and educate yourself about the disease. Take $10 and donate at theglobalfund.org. Write your legislators and ask for action. HIV/AIDS and cancer are prevalent in our world, but TB is devastating in the rest of it, and we can do something about it, if we choose.
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