Tuberculosis makes sharp surge
The Issue: The resurgent of a long forgotten disease even in affluent industrialized nations.
Our View: Tuberculosis outbreak shows that safeguards are necessary to control its spread.
Tuberculosis, a disease redolent of poverty and squalor, is making a comeback even in affluent Japan. An AP story says that TB in nearby Japan jumped in 1999 for the third straight year, and the per capita infection rate–38.1 per 100,000 people–was by far the highest among industrialized nations.
“The surge has caught Japan’s medical establishment off guard. Health officials are rushing to update prevention programs, hospitals are fretting over the lack of specialists in the disease and experts bemoan the lack of research money”.
A TB outbreak at a South Carolina prison said there are 31 confirmed cases of tuberculosis found among HIV-infected male inmates and workers. “The outbreak began with an infected inmate who was not diagnosed for at least two months and spread after a medical student examined him developed active TB”.
What does this tell us about tuberculosis? Everybody is at risk of contracting it no matter the economic station in life–poverty stricken poor or affluent! The CNMI needs to critically review the spread of this disease forthwith. It must review and provide concrete answers to, i.e., a separate facility for confinement of patients who have contracted the disease.
It is one of those issues that needs to be addressed and resolved beyond political regimes. For instance, it isn’t the neglect of public health officials that active TB patients are mixed with regular patients in regular or acute wards on the floor. The construction of a separate confinement facility has gone in and out of budget proposals for the last several years. It has gotten nowhere because it is viewed as inconsequential.
Need this disease spread to epidemic proportions before politicians address it forthwith? Let’s do something about it today! Si Yuus Maase`yan ghilisow!
