alt Hacker NewsI recently read "Everything is Tuberculosis". It describes a similar issue with the rich / poor country divide.
It's quite sad and difficult to read at times.
I recently read "Everything is Tuberculosis". It describes a similar issue with the rich / poor country divide.
It's quite sad and difficult to read at times.
Tuberculosis is different, in a very dark, utilitarian way. 4% of new TB cases are multi-drug resistant (19% of recurrences).
Once it’s multi-drug resistant, if you’re poor then you get an incredibly depressing choice. Rich countries pay for expensive drug resistance testing.
Poor countries have to answer an impossible question. You either do nothing and see if they live, or you try to guess what drugs will work and give them those. However, if you’re wrong and the treatment doesn’t work then the risk that you’ve just made the strain immune to one or more of the drugs in that cocktail skyrockets.
They get asked to either do nothing, or do the best they can today knowing it will make tomorrow worse.
TB is also shockingly infectious, which is sad. You can at least take steps to dramatically reduce HIV risk, it’s much much harder to avoid TB.