Tuberculosis - a global menace

Hello everyone, welcome to my blog once again. I hope you're fine.

I was surfing the net when I stomped on how deadly tuberculosis could be, so I decided to dig into it. I was able to get few words from tuberculosis patients I would like to share before anything else;

I felt cold at first, then several night sweats and cough. I felt it was just serious pneumonia. She was later diagnosed with tuberculosis. "I was ignorant of what tuberculosis entails and l never thought I could get infected," - Shelly. Source. [Paraphrased by me]

A comparable experience is that of Brown. He was diagnosed with pneumonia when he started feeling sick. After few months, he started having night sweats, no appetite and always tired. He was reexamined and got to know he has been infected with tuberculosis. Brown says, I never thought tuberculosis was massive enough to reach me." Source. [Paraphrased by me]

[Image Source: Wikimedia Commons. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic by AusAID]

Before we move on, we need to know what really is tuberculosis, is it really a threat to the human race, or mere assumptions?

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Tuberculosis

According to wikipedia, tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that is always caused by a bacterium known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). More detailed information about tuberculosis will be revealed as we proceed.

People living in urban areas and young adults are most likely to be infected with tuberculosis. Well, we also need to know that anyone can be infected with tuberculosis and we can find people with this disease everywhere around us, including our homes.

If you are infected with tuberculosis that doesn't mean you will fall sick. Perhaps you need to know the two types of tuberculosis. Namely;

• LATENT TUBERCULOSIS
  This implies that you have the bacteria in your body already but your healthy immune system stops them from spreading to other parts of your body. You feel healthy without getting sick because they cause no symptoms but they can transform into active tuberculosis if they are not treated at early stage.

About one-third of the world's population is believed to have latent tuberculosis. - James McIntosh. Source

• ACTIVE TUBERCULOSIS
  When latent tuberculosis becomes active, they gain power over the immune system and manifold in the blood. Thus, the immune system becomes powerless, giving room for the bacteria to cause symptoms and they are easily transmitted to others.

You need to be acquainted with the symptoms of tuberculosis disease for your safety so that you can fight it with the right medications at an early stage.

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Symptoms of Tuberculosis

As we've known that with latent tuberculosis, we are free from symptoms, we only need to run a skin or blood test to know if we are infected. Below are the symptoms of tuberculosis (active) we need to know;

• Pain in the chest

• Fever

• Weakness

• Weight loss

• No appetite

• Chills

• Night Sweats

Generally, tuberculosis affects the lungs but it is really deadly if left untreated because there's probability of affecting or spreading to other parts of the body through the blood, and when this happens, the symptoms change according to the infected organ. To mention few of the symptoms;

• Blood spotting in the urine when the kidneys are infected.

• Tuberculosis in the bones might cause joint destruction.

• Tuberculosis in the brain might lead to meningitis. Check out detailed explanation on meningitis in this post by @real2josh.

• Tuberculosis in the heart might lead to compromised pumping system of the heart which can result in cardiac arrest which is capable of shutting down the heart.

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When an active tuberculosis patient talks, laughs, sings, and the likes, tiny microbes are released through the air in the process because tuberculosis spreads with the aid of the air and when you inhale these deadly microbes, you get infected. These microbes stay with an infected person for a long time because they do not multiply in a twinkle of an eye, but instead, they grow gradually. This makes it possible for friends, coworkers, housemates of an active tuberculosis patient to get infected, which is very common.

In 2012, 80 percent of reported tuberculosis cases occurred in just 22 countries. Source

Despite the fact that tuberculosis is easily transmitted to others, it is not easy to get infected through a stranger (active tuberculosis patient), because the most common way of getting infected is through someone you know, like your coworkers, classmates, friends and so on.

Perhaps you're contemplating on whether to keep shaking hands with that your friend, workmate, housemate or not henceforth. Then you need to be informed that tuberculosis doesn't grow or survive on surfaces. You can not get infected by simply shaking hands with a tuberculosis patient. You can even share a food or drink with them. Your safety is guaranteed by doing that.

There are several tests to be done; chest x-ray, blood tests, and skin tests, for you to be certain whether you're infected or not.

Risk conditions and factors

• Malnutrition

• Diabetic patients

• Tobacco users, smokers, drugs or alcohol abusers are all prone to tuberculosis.

About 8 percent of tuberculosis cases worldwide are related to smoking. Source

• Little or no access to medical center needed to examine and treat a patient.

• Young children are at higher risk of getting infected due to their inchoate immune system.

• Constant association with active tuberculosis patient is also a risk of getting infected.

• You are also vulnerable to this disease when you travel to countries with high tuberculosis rates. For example; Russia, Philippines, Indian, China, Pakistan e.t.c.

• Prisoners are also at greater risk of getting infected due to the fact that the risk of active tuberculosis is higher anywhere there is overcrowding with little or no ventilation (I have a phobia for that though, so I think I'm safe... Lol).

• HIV positive patients are at greater risk of getting infected with tuberculosis because their immune system has been weakened by the virus (HIV). Thus, their immune system is not strong enough to fight active tuberculosis microbes, so these microbes overpower them and thrive.

The Global Menace

Tuberculosis has remained a global menace for years and major killer due to the increase in drug-resistance strains of tuberculosis bacterium. For over 60 years ago, antibiotics were used to combat tuberculosis, but some microbes managed to survive and their descendants inherited the same genes.

The above happens when an antibiotic does not destroy all the deadly microbes it aims at. The live microbes become resistant to that precise antibiotic drug, extend gradually to other antibiotic drugs, then manifold in large quantities and become drug-resistance strains of that particular disease.

Some of the most widely used treatments have been resisted by drug-resistance strains of tuberculosis. In this post, I explained microbial resistance to some antibiotics (you might wanna check it out).

[Image of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Bacteria. Source: Flickr. Author: NIAID.]

As stated by the World health organization (WHO), as of 2006, there were over 9.1 million additional cases of tuberculosis with over 1.6 million deaths. However, the estimated cases rate began to decrease gradually, but new cases of tuberculosis kept growing in number due to increase in population. So the new cases of tuberculosis had a greater effect, compared to the downward movement of tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis kills more than a million people annually, mostly in underdeveloped countries. Source. [Paraphrased by me]

Failure to have specialized medical agents and standard health centers in tuberculosis-aboriginal countries have contributed to the increase in the number of tuberculosis cases in such countries.

So far, tuberculosis has remained one of the prime cause of the increase in mortality rate worldwide.

Conclusion

The building of standard Medical facilities, with specialized, professional and responsible health care providers, especially in tuberculosis aboriginal and underdeveloped countries, will help reduce tuberculosis incidence rate.

Stay away from low ventilation and overcrowded areas because they pose a high risk of getting infected with tuberculosis, especially if an active tuberculosis patient is present.

Thank you for reading.

REFERENCES
All you need to know about tuberculosis
Tuberculosis test
Tuberculosis causes
Tuberculosis symptoms
Measuring the global burden of tuberculosis
Results from the global burden of disease study 2015
The global burden of tuberculosis mortality in children

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