Plans to tackle tuberculosis are failing and a new visionary approach is needed, according to an international group of doctors and scientists.
There is mounting concern that a rise in "virtually untreatable" tuberculosis poses a threat to countries around the world.
Writing in the Lancet medical journal, the group said governments were "complacent" and "neglectful".
It called for countries to do more to tackle the problem.
The World Health Organization says nearly nine million people become sick and 1.4 million die from tuberculosis each year.
Some countries are facing problems with drug resistance, with many first-choice antibiotics no longer working against some strains of the tuberculosis bacterium.
It is particularly acute in some parts of eastern Europe and central Asia, where up to a third of cases can be multi-drug resistant, known as MDR-TB.
The number of laboratory-confirmed cases of MDR-TB around the world has gone from 12,000 in 2005 to 62,000 in 2011. However, the real figure is thought to be closer to 300,000.
An even more stubborn version, resistant to more antibiotics, is called extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis and has been detected in 84 countries.
More on this story here.
3 comments:
Before antibiotics tuberculosis was a very dangerous disease and was treated with a diet very high in fat. Our family history has such record - my mom's aunt got married at the end of World War 2, it was a shortage of food then. Soon after her wedding the groom was diagnosed with tuberculosis. They sold all they had on a black market in order to buy him very calorie dense food, and he got cured in a while.
Hi Galina
"Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food" Hippocrates
Still stands good over 2000 years on. Thank you for your input here it’s appreciated.
Kind regards Eddie
Food diet etc does play a very important part in our lives and there is a lot that we as individuals can do. With the increase in travel, border crossing etc it must also contribute to the travel of many virus and diseases around our globe.
Scientists do of course play a big role in developing pills, injections against a great many diseases but we can never be complacent.
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