Dangerous TB spreading at alarming rate in Europe: WHO

[cory777]

Source: Reuters

Multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis (TB) are spreading at an alarming rate in Europe and will kill thousands unless health authorities halt the pandemic, the World Health Organization(WHO) said on Wednesday.

Launching a new regional plan to find, diagnose and treat cases of the airborne infectious disease more effectively, the WHO's European director warned that complacency had allowed a resurgence of TB and failure to tackle it now would mean huge human and economic costs in the future.

"TB is an old disease that never went away, and now it is evolving with a vengeance," said Zsuzsanna Jakab, the WHO's Regional Director for Europe.

"The numbers are scary," Lucica Ditiu, executive secretary of the Stop TB Partnership told a news conference in London. "This is a very dramatic situation."

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/13/us-tuberculosis-europe-idUSTRE78C7VD20110913?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Health+News%29

---

Activist News http://activistnews.blogspot.com/

[JCMach1]

1. This crap scares me...

:(

[sam11111]

4. poverty, crowded conditions major spread factors?

IIRC they are

Blame Globalism's pushing 2 billion people down into poverty.

[JCMach1]

7. My understanding the drug resistance came from people not completing the long treatment

that it takes to cure 'normal' TB.

Over the decades, TB has picked-up and evolved resistance to the first-line anti-biotics.

This could be particularly bad in the US where there are no comprehensive (or affordable) health options. It might make AIDS look like a cake-walk if it results in a full-blown pandemic.

[pampango]

18. "We are in the midst of the fastest period of (global) poverty reduction the world has ever seen."

With Little Fanfare, Hundreds Of Millions Escaped Poverty

We are in the midst of the fastest period of poverty reduction the world has ever seen. The global poverty rate, which stood at 25 percent in 2005, is ticking downward at one to two percentage points per year, lifting around 70 million people — the population of Turkey or Thailand — out of destitution annually. Advances in human progress on such a scale are unprecedented, yet they remain almost universally unacknowledged.

Global poverty has come to be seen as a constant, with the poor cut off from the prosperity enjoyed elsewhere. In a new study of global poverty, we upend this narrative, finding that poverty reduction accelerated in the early 2000s at a rate that has been sustained throughout the decade, even during the dark recesses of the financial crisis.

This means that the prime target of the Millennium Development Goals — to halve the rate of global poverty by 2015 from its 1990 level — was probably achieved in 2008. Whereas it took 25 years to reduce poverty by half a billion people up to 2005, the same feat was likely achieved in the six years between then and now. Never before have so many people been lifted out of poverty over such a brief period of time.

This stunning progress is driven by rapid economic growth across the developing world. During the 1980s and 1990s, per capita growth in developing countries averaged just 1 to 2 percent a year, not nearly fast enough to make per serious dent in poverty levels. Since around 2003, however, growth in the developing world has taken off, averaging 5 percent per capita per year.

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/with-little-fanfare-hundreds-of-millions-escaped-poverty/451432
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launches annual progress report on the Millennium Development Goals

On 7 July, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the annual progress report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), the MDG Report 2011, shining a spotlight on where progress is being made and where stronger efforts are urgently needed. The report presents the latest statistics on each of the Goals, globally and regionally, collected through more than 25 UN and international agencies.

This year's report shows that the world is on track to reducing the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by half. It also shows that some developing countries such as Burundi, Madagascar, Rwanda, Togo and Tanzania have achieved, or nearly achieved, the goal of sending all children to primary school.

http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2011/july/20110707amdgreportlaunch

[sam11111]

22. two billion down, 70 million up: sounds like a few managers up via employees down. headline

Hundreds of millions

Contradicted below by

Seventy million

Nonetheless I will view the UN report

[sam11111]

23. UN - only 70 million up: two billion down: ALL other claims(Jakarta) fiction

Total fiction

Murdoch FOX of that nation?

Claimed halving of poverty was in '08... UN says we are hoping to do that four years from now. Projections are not food on the table.
UN gave no worldwide poverty stat in the report I read. Just sucess in about five nations so far.

Successes in other measures - like water and schools and infant mortality - but again, isolated nations.

Growth may rise but wages still cut if bosses desire that. They do.

"Everywhere...inequalities have grown too wide" UN secretary Moon

[FLAprogressive]

2. I bet the anti-vaxxers have something to do with this

[sce56]

5. Anti Vaxxers? I was constantly tested for TB in my 20 year of Army service and they never talked

about vaccinating us for TB


TB Vaccine (BCG)

BCG, or bacille Calmette-Guérin, is a vaccine for TB disease. This vaccine is not widely used in the United States, but it is often given to infants and small children in other countries where TB is common. BCG vaccine does not always protect people from getting TB.

If you were vaccinated with BCG, you may have a positive reaction to a TB skin test. This reaction may be due to the BCG vaccine itself or due to infection with the TB bacteria. Your positive reaction probably means you have been infected with TB bacteria if

You recently spent time with a person who has active TB disease; or
You are from an area of the world where active TB disease is very common (such as most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Russia); or
You spend time where TB disease is common (homeless shelters, migrant farm camps, drug-treatment centers, health care clinics, jails, prisons).

The BCG vaccine should be considered only for very select persons who meet specific criteria and in consultation with a TB expert.

[No Elephants]

3. Recommended for importance.

[AverageJoe90]

6. This smells bad to me.

I hate to sound like a nut, but could there possibly be some biowarfare in there somewhere? Sorry, but no bacterium gets that tough, that quickly. There has to be something more to it.

[JCMach1]

8. I don't think you need tinfoil here... Dr.'s have been reporting drug resistant TB for years

Like AIDS (which apparently started in the 50's or 60's), it has taken awhile to reach a tipping-point towards pandemic.

[LeftyMom]

9. This has been brewing for a while.

Think less "biowarfare" and more underfed people in crowded Russian prisons living in perfect conditions to incubate novel disease strains and then spreading them hither and yon when they get released. The surprising thing is that it's taken this long to gain a toehold in the general population.

[AverageJoe90]

24. That's a possibility as well.

Still, though, can't help but wonder sometimes, ya know?

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. 
[link:www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules.html|Click
here] to review the message board rules.

[madrchsod]

11. it`s humans oldest disease...

[defendandprotect]

12. MEN ... PLEASE STOP THE SPITTING ... it's a filthy habit which spreads disease ...

Ws watching part of Kevin Costner's movie -- TIN CUP -- about golf the other

day -- and at least TWICE he was seen spitting --

Whaaaaaaaaaat???


This has been going on for 30 years or so now -- with baseball players leading the

way to teaching kids to do this -- not to mention how often you'll find an older

guy in the streets spitting!!!


Wasn't that Leonardi Di-Caprio teaching Kate Winslet to spit off of the Titanic -- !!!



Poppy Bush also ignored the need to keep TB suppressed -- and let it move on!!

[enuegii]

13. Since it is an "airborne infectious disease"

shouldn't we do something about all those filthy exhalers out there?

ZOMG! They're killing us!

[TexasTowelie]

14. Crap.

I read that while I was taking a bong hit--coughed all over the place and spilled the water

[defendandprotect]

16. It's an ideal way to spread disease -- and it's lovely to see -- !!!

[defendandprotect]

15. If you sit talking face to face with someone who has TB for 15 minutes ....

you're at risk --

So keep on spitting -- enjoy yourself -- it's so attractive!!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

17. Now why would they want to do that??

[mahatmakanejeeves]

20. Wasn't that Leonardi Di-Caprio teaching Kate Winslet to spit off of the Titanic -- !!!

And you can see how that turned out.

[w0nderer]

19. k&r for reading later n/t

[Javaman]

21. As poverty increases, it will only get worse.

That's some of the "good ol'days" the repukes are yearning for.

[PaulaFarrell]

25. first i've heard about it

living in england and first i've heard about this. we have mrsa here, but not of the tb variety that i know of. I know it's in africa, but i have not heard of it in europe yet. now, not that i'm a cynic but is this the same WHO who said that swine flu was a pandemic?

[du_grad]

26. Technical information on drug-resistant tuberculosis from CDC below

http://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/drtb/default.htm

I have worked in clinical microbiology for 37 years. TB is no joke. At the end of the 19th century about 1/3 of the population was infected with the organism that causes TB, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Not all of those cases were probably active (called latent TB in today's terminology), but it was the number one killer of humanity back then.

Although not a common disease in the US (due to diligence on the part of CDC and state health departments) it is unfortunately common in undeveloped countries. Partially treated tuberculosis becomes MDR and XDR-TB (see website for terminology). It took researchers until the 1940's to even find one drug that worked against tuberculosis. There is now only a very small handful of drugs that will cure it (if it's just regular TB and not MDR/XDR). One must take either double or triple drug therapy for 6-12 MONTHS - EVERY DAY - which is why TB becomes partially treated and develops multi-drug resistance.

TB can be easily passed in a crowded airplane. All you need is somebody coughing in an enclosed space. We are under mandate to read smears for TB within 24 hours of the specimen receipt. Any positive smear is called to the floor/doctor immediately and that patient is reported within 24 hours to the local health department/state health department/CDC. The patient is put into respiratory isolation until smears are negative. All positive patients are tracked.

TB is passed via droplets: sneezing, coughing, singing, spitting (!) Overcrowded conditions and poor diet can cause walled-off infections to become active. Tuberculosis can eventually spread to all areas of the body and infect the bones and brain. Cavitations occur in the lungs and many die from rupture of major blood vessels destroyed by the breakdown of the tissues. It is a long slow ugly disease.

Vaccinations are not used much in the US. More information here:

http://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/vaccines/default.htm

For in-depth coverage of the history of TB and the discovery of drugs to treat it, read _The Forgotten Plague_ by Frank Ryan, MD. It is quite eye-opening.

http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Plague-Battle-Against-Tuberculosis/dp/0316763810/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316060889&sr=1-1

[GreenPartyVoter]

27. I've heard that we have it here in our homeless shelters.