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World TB Day: Confronting Conspicuous Consumption

March 23, 2002

For this year's World TB Day, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) presents a feature profile about treating civilians and prisoners with TB in Siberia, where the levels are rising to near epidemic proportions.

TB in Prisons: Containing a Catastrophe.

One in four adult men in Russia has been incarcerated at last once in his life. But conditions common to Russian prisons—massive overcrowding, malnutrition, and lack of hygiene, sunlight, and ventilation—make these facilities ideal breeding grounds for tuberculosis, and can turn punishments for minor infractions into death sentences. Read

TB in Civil Society: Facing a Rising Epidemic.

As TB rates fall in the prisons, rates are climbing in the general population. This article has interviews with TB sufferers. "I've heard that in the West, they can cure TB. But here, you can only buy time..." says Zhenia. "I know that I'm chronic, that I cannot be cured, and that I will die of this disease." Read

Tracing Defaulters.

The battle to contain the tuberculosis epidemic in civil society takes doctors and nurses into neighborhoods to track 'defaulters'—TB patients who have interrupted their treatment. Besides putting their own lives at risk, those with active TB may infect 10 to 20 other individuals per year. Read

 

Some Facts About Tuberculosis

  • Every year, 2 million people die of TB and 8 million people develop active TB.
  • One third of the world is currently infected, and 16 million suffer daily from active TB.
  • 95% of TB cases and 98% of TB deaths occur in poor countries. The epidemic is expected to worsen in the next few years, especially in Africa and Southeast Asia.
  • Every year over 1.5 million people acquire active TB in sub-Saharan Africa. This number is rising rapidly as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic: TB is an opportunistic disease that preys on HIV-positive people whose immune systems are weakened.
  • TB is a leading cause of death among people with AIDS, and in some regions of Africa, three-quarters of TB patients are HIV-infected.
  • TB spreads through the air and is highly contagious. On average, a person with infectious TB infects 10-15 others every year.
  • People infected with TB do not necessarily become ill - the immune system creates a barrier around the bacilli that can remain dormant for years. 10% of infected people (who do not have HIV/AIDS) develop active TB at some point during their lifetime.
  • Patients develop a persistent cough (sometimes with blood in the sputum), fever, weight loss, chest pain and breathlessness.
  • The currently recommended treatment is a drug combination that must be taken for 6-8 months.

 

Tags: Russian Federation, Tuberculosis

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