Opinion | We Know How to Conquer Tuberculosis - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/opinion/we-know-how-to-conquer-tuberculosis.html
And so, tuberculosis remains the world’s leading infectious disease killer, by far. It infects some 10 million people around the world every year, killing roughly 1.5 million. That’s some 4,000 deaths per day. By comparison, Ebola killed four people in 2017. America’s opioid epidemic kills about 115 people a day.
Still, tuberculosis is rarely the stuff of headlines. It’s ancient. It normally affects only the poorest people in the poorest countries. And when it does spread through wealthier areas, it’s generally curable with antibiotics. But a contingent of doctors, scientists and public health officials have spent the past two decades battling a global epidemic of the disease. And on Wednesday, they got their first hearing at the United Nations General Assembly. In a high-level meeting exclusively about tuberculosis control, those experts called on world leaders to devote more attention and far more resources to the disease. Both are urgently needed. Tuberculosis receives significantly less funding than H.I.V. or malaria, even though TB kills more people each year than both of those diseases combined. The World Health Organization estimates a $3.5 billion funding shortfall for TB control efforts, and says that gap could double in five years.
But policymakers, industry leaders and doctors on the front lines might also consider a change in strategy: Treat tuberculosis outbreaks in poor countries the same way they are treated in rich ones. That is, don’t just treat those who are sick; find and test their household members, neighbors, classmates and colleagues — and then treat the ones who test positive. Give them medications to kill the bacteria before they develop symptoms and before they pass the bacteria on, through their own coughing, to the next victim.