Tuberculosis
Infectious Disease – Part 1: Tuberculosis
Left: Mycobacterium Tuberculosis bacteria1 Right: A patient in Lesotho with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis3
TB in FOCUS
For many of us in the Western world, Tuberculosis (TB) is often thought of a disease of the past. However, TB is very much a current health issue for people living in developing countries, with 10.4 million new cases diagnosed every year3. Although TB is both preventable and treatable, it is currently the world’s most deadly infectious disease.
Did you know that over 1.8 million people are killed by TB every year?
This disease kills more people that HIV and malaria.
Alarmingly, cases of drug resistant TB are on the rise. As TB is predominantly seen as a disease of the poor, there is little incentive for researchers and drug companies to develop more effective diagnostic tests and treatments. Many governments continue to use outdated practices to the detriment of their patients.
Want to know more? Check out our list of curated resources to educate, inform and inspire you to join the fight against this devastating disease. From podcasts for your morning commute, to books for your summer holidays – Vision Global Health has you covered.
Everyday Emergency: The Medicins San Frontieres (MSF) Podcast
In this podcast series by Medicins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, health workers tell their true stories from the front line of humanitarian medicine. The content is both reflective and jammed-packed full of gritty medical detail.
What it’s great for:
Revision, inspiration and understanding how social and political conflicts influence disease.
Where you can get it:
https://www.msf.org.uk/everyday-emergency-msf-podcast or enter “Everyday Emergency” into your nearest podcast provider.
Disclaimer
This series can be pretty confronting and heart breaking at times. If you’re feeling a bit vulnerable or overwhelmed, put it on your list for another day.
Vision Recommended Episodes:
Season 2, Episode 1: “My fight isn’t over.- World TB Day”
“One, two, three… 12 last pills. In the past two-and-a-half years, I have had to swallow close to 15,000 tablets. What started off as regular tuberculosis, morphed to a stronger resistance and after five months, I was put on multidrug-resistant TB drugs. As if this killer disease was on a rampage for my family, my three-year-old younger child, John, became very ill too…”
Elizabeth Wangeci’s story is a remarkable one. Against the odds, Elizabeth, from Nairobi, was the first person to survive one of the deadliest forms of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Kenya.
In the first episode of the second series of Everyday Emergency, and on World TB Day 2017, we hear from Elizabeth nearly one year after being cured. We also hear from Mark Sherlock, an MSF TB doctor who works not far from Elizabeth in Nairobi
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Season 1, Episode 4: “The Darkest Hour”
“The last 13 years of my life have been dedicated towards turning me into a finely tuned and rational life-saving machine. I am not supposed to form emotional attachments to my patients or hold them passively and powerless while they die. I’m supposed to secure their airways, stabilise their blood pressures and attach them to life-support machines. But this is the reality in which I find myself: my favourite patient lies dying in my arms.”
In this episode we meet British doctor Emily Wise who, in 2013, travelled to Uzbekistan – a country with particularly high drug-resistant tuberculosis rates. In ‘The Darkest Hour‘, Emily describes in heartbreaking detail the final minutes of a TB patient’s life.
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Season 2, Episode 7: “All I need is a metre of rope.”
“Twenty months of treatment? Fifteen to 16 tablets a day, right? No, I would rather die. All I need is a metre of rope.”
Despite ranking alongside HIV as the leading cause of death by infectious disease, the global response to TB has been found wanting.
Because the drugs used in standard treatments have not changed in over 40 years, they are becoming less and less effective due to increasingly high levels of resistance from the bacterium. In the seventh episode of Everyday Emergency, Australian doctor Amrita Ronnachit discusses her time battling TB in Uzbekistan, and the case of one patient who struggled with his treatment.
*All summaries are taken from MSF.org.uk
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
This Pulitzer Prize winning biography chronicles the remarkable life of Dr Paul Farmer: a Harvard graduate, infectious diseases physician, anthropologist and human rights activist. In this book, we follow Farmer as he builds clinics in some of the poorest areas of Haiti, undertakes a medical degree at Harvard and goes on to be one of the most important public health reformists of our time. From the slums of Haiti to the prisons of Russia, this book provides insight into the devastating effects of drug resistant TB and the brilliant work NGOs are doing to address health problems that are neglected by many governments.
What it’s great for:
- Reflecting on the moral, philosophical and medical challenges of working in a world where health resources are not equitable.
- Insight into how NGOs are formed and the challenges they face.
Where can I get it?
Download on iBooks or get in touch with the excellent people at Boffin’s Bookstores. https://www.boffinsbooks.com.au/books/9781846684319/mountains-beyond-mountains-one-doctors-quest-to-heal-the-world
Blogs and Articles
Need more information? Get the facts and figures here:
http://www.who.int/tb/post2015_TBstrategy.pdf?ua=1
https://www.msf.org.uk/issues/tuberculosis
https://www.pih.org/article/new-drugs-are-a-new-hope-against-tb-in-peru
Careers
Have we got you interested in in a career as an Infectious Diseases physician? You can find out more about the training pathway here: https://www.racp.edu.au/trainees/advanced-training/advanced-training-programs/infectious-diseases
Campaigns
Wondering what you can do to help right now?
Head to http://stepupfortb.org/activist-toolkit to find out how to be a TB activist.
References
- http://stateschronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mycobacterium_tuberculosis_14313982_1.jpg
- World TB Day: A Q&A With Expert Carole Mitnick. (2013). Partners In Health. Retrieved 3 September 2017, from https://www.pih.org/article/world-tb-day-expert-carole-mitnick-on-drug-development-treatment-models-and
- Tuberculosis (TB) Fact Sheet. (2017). World Health Organization. Retrieved 3 September 2017, from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs104/en/
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