ZKEA
World Outbreak Update
Tuberculosis, TBTuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis has been present in human populations since antiquity. Early Egyptian and ancient Chinese civilizations already thought of the disease as ancient. Hippocrates identified it as being a very widespread disease in the Greek city-states and usually a fatal one. Indeed, "consumption" - a common term for TB, is derived from the Greek term "phtisis".For a period in the 17th and 18th century it almost became fashionable to suffer from consumption. It sometimes seemed to favor the artistic - poets, writers and their admirers. This fashion may have been helped by the presence of sanatoriums - basically health clubs, usually located in clean dry climates, where combination of rest, climate and good food could sometimes effect a cure.
TB fell easily to early antibiotics. A rapid succession of such drugs virtually erased TB as a serious health threat by the 1960s (in the developed world, at least). In fact, the conquest of TB was often held up as a role model of what scientific progress and strong health care could accomplish. Beginning in 1980s a worrisome trend began to develop - TB rates began to rise worldwide, even in the developed nations. This was driven by a number of factors, including the slow erosion of health systems, rapid immigration, and growing intractable poverty in some locations. But the greatest factor in this spread was the rise of Multi-Drug Resistance (MDR). Essentially, TB turned out to be quite nimble in the evolutionary sense. Therefore strains evolved that were impervious to one or more of the commonly-used antibiotics. As the years passed this problem became more acute, until by 1990 all TB was resistant to some antibiotics, and some strains were resistant to virtually every drug. This evolutionary surprise set off alarm bells in the medical community. Suddenly the world faced a new TB epidemic. But this time there were few options for treatment. TB turned out to be the harbinger of the future, for now many pathogens exhibit MDR. This is one of the greatest health challenges mankind faces - and a grim warning for how flexible and mutable disease organisms can be.
Link: Tuberculosis Treatment
And History
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