by Helen Bynum
(c) Copyright 2012, 2015.
This book, part of Oxford University Press’s series on “biographies” of diseases, highlights one disease the haunted humankind for millennia – tuberculosis/consumption. This battle, like its infectious disease brethren of malaria and yellow fever, is as old as recorded civilization. Like most infectious diseases, it has become a victim of its success in that its prevalence is now only among some of the “less desirables” of humanity: The developing world, the homeless, those with HIV/AIDS, and displaced persons.
As with malaria, one can wonder whether tuberculosis (in its MDRTB form – multi-drug resistant tuberculosis) might make a “comeback” someday in the form of a epidemic in the West. All that it would take is a little lackadaisical behavior on the part of a few public health centers in urban environments. Educational works like Bynum’s help combat such human tendencies by keeping us aware of these challenges.
Current therapy involves direct observation of ingestion of four medicines which have significant side effects. Communities like immigrants, who face the double whammy of coming from countries with endemic TB and of living in crowded environments which are conducive to TB, can benefit from a dose of preventative medicine in being coached how to be sanitary when living in close quarters.