This Ancient, Deadly Disease Is Still Killing In Europe

TBI ^ | 12-30-3011 | John Donnelly

[blam]

This Ancient, Deadly Disease Is Still Killing In Europe

John Donnelly, GlobalPost
Dec. 30, 2011, 12:53 PM

GENEVA, Switzerland – On the sidelines of a conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, just three months ago, a senior health official from Belarus met privately with Mario Raviglione, whose job here at the World Health Organization’s headquarters is to control the spread of tuberculosis around the world.

Belarus needed help. It had just confirmed a study that found 35 percent of all TB cases in the capital of Minsk were multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) – the highest rate in the world ever recorded for a deadly disease, which takes up to two years to treat and is cured in Western Europe only one third of the time.

“It’s a real tragic situation,” Raviglione, director of WHO’s Stop TB Department, said, looking back at that moment with the Belarus official. “But they came out openly about this and they wanted help, which is very positive. For a long time, several countries have been hiding their realities about multi-drug resistant TB.”

The WHO's Regional Office for Europe recently released a report that warned about the spread of the hard-to-treat MDR-TB into all of Europe, making the case that the relatively wealthy capitals of the West faced the grave danger of a much higher number of cases if the entire region did not move quickly to put in place effective control measures.

The report, which was released in September and which now poses a great challenge to global-health experts in Europe, concluded that “MDR-TB is spreading at an alarming rate” in Europe and Central Asia, a region that includes the top nine countries in the world in rates of drug-resistant TB among newly diagnosed patients. TB, a global pandemic

(snip)

[Myrddin]

This is a picture of my great grandparents in 1915. My great grandfather was born in 1842. He emigrated to the US in 1863 and served in the Union army before marrying my great grandmother in 1865 at the end of the war. My grandfather and his twin brother were born in 1887, the last of 19 children.

[Myrddin]

Cute thread. Folks had lots of fun with the Cheddar references.

[reed13k]

Ha I thought Of syphilis ;)

[Mears]

Thanks for the ping.

Tuberculosis took my father in 1938. He was 32.

I still test positive with the tine test.

[ladyjane]

You shouldn’t be taking the tine test.

You will always test positive and you could get a bad reaction.

But if you’ve lived this long with no bad reaction you’re probably going to live forever!

Seriously, check with a good physician about taking that test again.

[Mears]

.

I only have taken the tine test once,about 17 years ago.

I was still working and someone in our building contracted TB so we were all tested,

When I did the follow up visit to the MD she told me not to bother with it again,as you suggested.

Fortunately I never had a reaction.

[Mears]

In my earlier post I neglected to mention that my brother and I had to have annual chest X-rays until we were 18. That was 13 years for me and 15 for him.

I still remember what that clinic looked like and we both were negative every time,thank God.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks blam and decimon. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[gleeaikin]

Another important vitamin to protect against illness is Vitamin C. It needs to be taken 3 or 4 times a day as it is burned up or excreted in 5 or 6 hours. It is antihistaminic, anti-inflamatory, and helps production of white blood cells. Thanks for the link, and Happy New Year.

[Does so]

My quote was taken from the 2006 article you linked in post #2.

Thank you for these articles.

It was in 2006 I moved to an even sunnier Florida location. My skin is getting wrinkled by the sun, but risking serious diseases is far worse. Two small skin lesions were removed last year, but were found to be non-cancerous. Science News said those risks didn't compare to avoiding serious disease.

[arthurus]

D3- 10,00 daily. My wife and I have been doing that for two and a half years. She is an elementary school teacher and used to bring home flu and colds 5-6 times a school year. We have had none of that since we started on the D3. I have started some of my friends to taking it and they all have ceased having the “normal” seasonal viruses. My daughter started it when she had a miserable flu and expected to be out of circ for a week. She megadosed once in the morning with the formula of 900 units per pound of body weight. She was fine by evening.

[blam]

"My quote was taken from the 2006 article you linked in post #2. "

Oh okay.

I started taking elevated doses of vitamin D at that time...I haven't been sick since.

[mewzilla]

Is that pic from a TB ward? Because it reminds me of a photo I’ve seen from a story on the 1918 influenza. Just curious :-)

[blam]

I don't know the source of the photo.

Probably a 'file' photo, I'd guess.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Trends in Tuberculosis, United States:

http://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/statistics/TBTrends.htm

World TB country index:

http://www.who.int/tb/country/data/profiles/en/index.html

I live fairly near a (still) isolated building that used to be a TB sanitarium way back when. It has a smokestack for the furnace used to burn all linens, mattresses and all other medical waste. And this was for “normal” TB.

Eventually it was converted to a children’s hospital, but before they did so, they gutted the building, leaving only a shell.

I’ll also note that it has special zoning, so that nothing can be built anywhere near it. I’m not even sure that the county (county island) is able to change its zoning. They did not kid around back then.

As far as MDR-TB goes, in western Europe it has a 60% mortality rate, with treatment that is not easy.

XDR-TB is a death sentence. The last major outbreak of that was in South Africa, with 51 of 52 dead within 25 days. If someone in the US is diagnosed with it, they will be put in a negative pressure isolation room, involuntarily, and when they die, all furniture in the room will be burned and every surface strongly bleached.

Likely with industrial strength sodium hypochlorite, that is dangerously caustic.

[Viiksitimali]

“Is that pic from a TB ward? Because it reminds me of a photo I’ve seen from a story on the 1918 influenza.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CampFunstonKS-InfluenzaHospital.jpg
Historical photo of the 1918 Spanish influenza ward at Camp Funston, Kansas, showing the many patients ill with the flu

[colorado tanker]

There were a lot of TB sanitariums out here in the days before effective drug therapies. National Jewish Health, probably the best respiratory hospital in the world, started as a TB sanitarium for indigents.

[SunkenCiv]

Richard Nixon had a brother die of TB, in a sanitarium, I think in Arizona.

[neverdem]

Thanks decimon