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Doctors Struggling to Fight ‘Totally Drug-Resistant’ Tuberculosis in South Africa
US News
TB kills more people annually than any other infectious disease besides HIV
In a patient’s fight against tuberculosis—the bacterial lung disease that kills more people annually than any infectious disease besides HIV— doctors have more than 10 drugs from which to choose. Most of those didn’t work for Uvistra Naidoo, a South African doctor who contracted the disease in his clinic. For those who contract the disease now, maybe none of them will.
A new paper published earlier this week in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infectious Diseasesjournal warns that the first cases of “totally drug-resistant” tuberculosis have been found in South Africa and that the disease is “virtually untreatable.”
Like many bacterial diseases, tuberculosis has been evolving to fend off many effective antibiotics, making it more difficult to treat. But even treatable forms of the disease are particularly tricky to cure; drug sensitive strains must be treated with a six-month course of antibiotics. Tougher cases require long-term hospitalization and a regimen of harsh drugs that can last years.
Tim
February 12th, 2013
Cut off their hands, hang a tire filled with gasoline around their necks, light the gas …
Shazzam! TB no longer a problem!
Ya just gotta think like an African.
Aufklarer
February 12th, 2013
This is what happens when antibiotics are used improperly and indiscriminantly. And it’s not just TB that is a problem. Here in Deetroyt over 1/3 of the population is colonized with drug-resistant Staph. aureus. No good will come of this.
Maudie N Mandeville
February 12th, 2013
Chris Rock’s statement that blacks are the most talented, aside, South Africa and indeed the entire continent has been living off of American and European innovation and scientific breakthroughs for a couple of centuries. The question to ask is, would this be happening under apartheid? If you can’t take care of yourself, others will, in one form or another. South Africans have chosen their path of socialism and corruption. I have other things to worry about as I watch my country deteriorate.
Look for these outbreaks in places like Detroit and Newark via Obamacare.
RANDO
February 12th, 2013
TB was mostly wiped out in this country until a few years ago.
Now it is on the rise, along with lice and bedbugs.
And, illegal immigrants.
J Frank Parnell
February 12th, 2013
Bring up the fact illiterate third worlders vector drug-resistant deadly diseases into the US and the Democrat speech-control apparatus targets you. Same for communist destruction of South Africa, witness Ruth Buzzy’s preference for its constitution.
Leftism kills.
Gina
February 12th, 2013
i’ll never go to africa. anything in africa i care to see can be viewed from my tv.
McFartus Spontaneous
February 12th, 2013
And how many of these infected TB children from Africa will b inside the House Chamber tonite Pelosi? Diesease kills us all.. I never heard of a diseased cell picking up a weapon and killing people. When is punch a Demonrat in the face again?
Boobie the Rocket Dog
February 12th, 2013
TB killed Americans and Europeans at that rate in the 19th century. When you read in history or your own genealogy that someone died of “consumption,” that was tuberculosis. And, yes, it is on the rise here with the influx of Haitian and other third world immigrants (Somalian Obama-voters).
Billy Fuster
February 12th, 2013
We have the same problem in this country with totally logic-resistant liberalism.
Tim
February 12th, 2013
Union of South Africa committed suicide – the death throes are just agonizingly long.
Mirror image of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia).
Maybe they’ll rename it “Shizzizzle.”