XDR-TB: A preventable pandemic

[This blog post will be off-topic, but I feel inspired to write it.]

It saddens me to see that there is so much more we could achieve in this world, if we weren't confounded regularly by politics and greed. And it makes me angry when I see real problems, the sort that could destroy our world as we know it, that could easily be stopped if we put politics and greed aside and co-operated as a race of human beings.

I recently learnt, courtesy of a TED talk, about Extremely Drug Resistant Tuberculosis. TB is a horrific and dangerous disease, but one that we barely give a real thought to in the modern western world - because it's totally treatable and preventable. However in the rest of the world it still kills 4400 people every day.

This, unfortunately, is not the real problem with the current state of TB. Due to lack of funding and co-operation, especially with poorer countries, TB has been mistreated on a large scale - usually by supplying insufficient courses in the antibiotics that treat the disease. Because of this under-treatment, TB has evolved into a new form that is resistant to the antibiotics. This new form of human-made TB, known as Extremely Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (or XDR-TB) is not preventable or treatable with most current drugs.

It's heart breaking to see how easily the west can ignore poverty and other problems in poorer nations. In this case, however, the "problem" isn't going to stay out of sight forever. There is absolutely no reason for this disease to have been created, other than through politics, greed and ignorance. And it needs to be stopped now, or a global pandemic will threaten the population of the world.