Monday, March 24, 2008

Untreatable TB Strain sweeps Kyrgyz prisons

Untreatable TB Strain Sweeps Kyrgyz prisons.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7307398.stm

You might say to me, "So What?" Well. The problem is that in poor countries untreatable TB doesn't just stay in the prisons and when it starts to spread to the countryside it might one day wind up here in the US. Untreatable TB strains are more deadly to the general populace worldwide than AIDS. Potentially, one carrier of an untreatable(multiple drug resistant)TB could potentially infect thousands to millions in the US or Europe because TB is airborne.

It is said that up to 1/3 of the population of China has TB. A majority of those people have treatable TB and then a certain percentage have untreatable(MDR) TB. I was talking to a nurse about how serious untreatable (MDR) TB is on earth and how much more potentially deadly it is within months upon a given populations than say, AIDS is. So because Kyrgyz is not a rich country this problem is potentially serious for all of us.

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