The powers that be are still desperate to develop a TB vaccine.
(http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60177-4/abstract).
This relies on the presumption that TB is an infectious disease, caused by a 'germ' (in this case Mycobacterium tuberculosis). The fact that TB occurs almost exclusively in deprived socio-economic conditions, or circumstances of poor nutrition, is once again being ignored. That we cannot medicate or vaccinate against poor housing, unsanitary sanitation, over-crowding, poor nutrition, alcoholism, smoking etc, seems to merrily bypass the imagination of those in charge of public health. As a result we have bombarded, continuously, the victims of this disease, with a range of powerful, long term antibiotics, with the result that the TB epidemic now flares unchecked, and is marked by the increasingly frequent occurrence of, first, drug resistant TB, then Multi-drug resistant (MDR)TB, then Extreme drug resistant TB (XDR), and finally, Complete drug resistant TB (CDR), a disease for which we have no chemical answer...
A decent house and a decent diet for each TB sufferer, or potential sufferer, would go a long way to reducing the expanding epidemic, as was well described by the Valley Trust food garden programme in Kwazulu-Natal. The use of drugs and vaccines for a socio-economic disease is not proving to be effective.
(http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60177-4/abstract).
This relies on the presumption that TB is an infectious disease, caused by a 'germ' (in this case Mycobacterium tuberculosis). The fact that TB occurs almost exclusively in deprived socio-economic conditions, or circumstances of poor nutrition, is once again being ignored. That we cannot medicate or vaccinate against poor housing, unsanitary sanitation, over-crowding, poor nutrition, alcoholism, smoking etc, seems to merrily bypass the imagination of those in charge of public health. As a result we have bombarded, continuously, the victims of this disease, with a range of powerful, long term antibiotics, with the result that the TB epidemic now flares unchecked, and is marked by the increasingly frequent occurrence of, first, drug resistant TB, then Multi-drug resistant (MDR)TB, then Extreme drug resistant TB (XDR), and finally, Complete drug resistant TB (CDR), a disease for which we have no chemical answer...
A decent house and a decent diet for each TB sufferer, or potential sufferer, would go a long way to reducing the expanding epidemic, as was well described by the Valley Trust food garden programme in Kwazulu-Natal. The use of drugs and vaccines for a socio-economic disease is not proving to be effective.
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