Thank you for all the TB education M'Dear
~snips from each TB article
The good news is that these days TB is “completely curable,” Reid said. “Most people who are exposed can fight the infection or fight the germs.”
When people have TB, they may have symptoms such as coughing, loss of appetite, weight loss, night sweats and fever. People with these symptoms should see a doctor to determine the presence of TB.
The strain, known as "extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis", or XDR-TB, has the potential to return TB treatment "to the pre-antibiotic era" in which the only treatment was cutting out parts of the lungs.
TB is also the biggest killer of people with HIV, causing about 13 per cent of AIDS deaths.
But while cases of the debilitating and potentially fatal disease are subsiding in the US, the subset of infections resistant to some or most of the drugs used against TB is burgeoning, the WHO said. Between 2000 and 2004, 20 per cent of bacteria recovered from TB patients and tested at WHO-affiliated labs worldwide were resistant to the two main drugs, isoniazid and rifampin, used to treat the disease, earning them the label "multi-drug resistant".
Overall, the WHO said, 347 cases of extensively drug-resistant TB had been found since 2000. By 2004 this had risen to 11 per cent of all drug-resistant cases in industrialised countries.
With 500,000 people worldwide suffering from multi-drug-resistant TB, the true rate of the extensively resistant form is likely to be higher than the labs have recorded, because many countries do not have the resources for TB surveillance and analysis
The study noted that while the most-resistant TB was identified in all regions, it was most common in Eastern Europe and western Asia.
Reid needs to read the XDR-TB literature before he becomes a TB cure cheerleader. Timely diagnosis of the extremely drug resistant type is critical to saving lives.