Tuberculosis doesn’t seem to be problem, at least from the way the disease was dealt with in a recent article (“Tuberculosis: Advisory panel suggests development of new vaccine,” News, Aug. 28). Not only was the article hidden away, but it seemed to insinuate that tuberculosis research toward a vaccine was superfluous, given that cases in the United States are at an all-time low.
This slant belittles the sheer enormity of the problem of TB. More than 3 million people around the world die every year. This makes TB the world’s No. 1 infectious disease killer, and the world’s No. 1 killer of women.
From these figures, it is obvious that the scourge of TB is far from over. Though cases in the U.S. are at an all-time low, TB has been a problem in the recent past, and outbreaks may occur in the future. In the 1980s, New York City cut nearly all of its funding for TB control programs because it was felt that TB wasn’t a serious health threat. Yet in the early 1990s, an outbreak of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) occurred. This epidemic cost the city $700 million over five years, which is far more than the few million dollars that would have been spent if the TB programs were in place.
We should learn a lesson from this, and not brush TB under the rug.
Today’s global economy forces the U.S. to be actively involved in the problems of other nations and TB is no exception. Because TB is an airborne disease that is spread much like the common cold, it knows no borders. Already, 40 percent of U.S. TB cases are attributed to foreign-born patients. Because immigration and global travel will continue, Americans will always be threatened by outbreaks of TB. Multidrug resistance is being bred in “hot-spots” abroad that have poor treatment programs and, for the first time in 40 years, the world faces the threat of incurable TB. A vaccine to prevent the spread of TB may be one of the most effective ways to stop the deaths from mounting.
Though it may be 10 to 20 years away, if the media and others fail to realize its importance, a new vaccine may be 50 to 60 years away or never come to fruition at all. With the World Health Organization estimating 4 million deaths in the year 2004 if nothing more is done, any delayed action may be too little too late.
