For more than 5000 years, tuberculosis(TB) has been on a brawl with mankind. Today, TB is the deadliest infectious disease on our planet and many have had a broil with it. Charles IX, Louis VIII, and Louis XVII (France), Henry VII (England) contracted TB. In more recent history, Nelson Mandela (while in jail) and Desmond Tutu (as a kid) both freedom fighters, from South Africa have been victims of TB. Today, armed with a dangerous partner in HIV, TB kills about 1,5 million people every year. The sad news is that the partner (HIV) gets all the limelight and funding too.
Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that was almost completely eradicated following the discovery of antibiotics until HIV came on board. The mantra of the HIV is its ability to sneak in through the back door to destroy soldier cells in our body that are responsible for keeping our immune system strong. Once we lose these soldier cells, we become exposed like a house without doors hence diseases come in easily to attack our body.
Some of the symptoms of TB include Cough (more than 2 weeks), coughing of blood streaked sputum, loss of weight, drenching night sweat, and chest pain.
About a third of the human population has been exposed to TB (mostly airborne), however, the infection is usually isolated and inactive in the lung until such a time when the body’s immune system is compromised. Bronchopulmonary TB is the most common form (80%) but other forms do exist especially in people infected with HIV.
TB has caused over a million death every year but none of these deaths ought to have occurred. Unlike HIV, TB is a curable disease. Unlike HIV, it can also be vaccinated against.
Indeed, since Robert Koch discovered Mycobacterium Tuberculosis as the bacterium responsible for TB on the 24th of march, 1882, very little advancement has been made both in the method of diagnosing TB as well as treatment available. Not many antibiotics are available today for use if you contracted TB.
To add salt to injury, Mycobacterium Tuberculosis has become resistant to many of these few antibiotics hence the high rate of morbidity and mortality from TB infections.
For many reasons, HIV has always grabbed the limelight and funding too as far as infectious diseases are concerned. Even today as I write, many of my colleagues are gathered in Durban, South Africa for the International AIDS conference. This conference has grabbed headlines in many newspapers around the world which is great. The TB conference is next, I hope it will be given the same attention and funding too.
In the words of Mandela, ‘we cannot fight AIDS unless we do much more to fight TB as well’.
