Posted on 01/22/2007 7:29:09 PM PST by happygrl
Doctors fear TB strain could cause a global pandemic if it is not controlled
South Africa is considering forcibly detaining people who carry a deadly strain of tuberculosis that has already claimed hundreds of lives. The strain threatens to cause a global pandemic, but the planned move pits public protection against human rights. The country's health department says it has discussed with the World Health Organisation and South Africa's leading medical organisations the possibility of placing carriers of extreme drug resistant TB or XDR-TB under guard in isolation wards until they die, but has yet to reach a decision.
More than 300 cases of the highly infectious disease, which is spread by airborne droplets and kills 98% of those infected within about two weeks, have been identified in South Africa.
But doctors believe there have been hundreds, possibly thousands, more and the numbers are growing among the millions of people with HIV, who are particularly vulnerable to the disease. Their fear is that patients with XDR-TB, told that there is little that can be done for them, will leave the isolation wards and go home to die. But while they are still walking around they risk spreading the infection.
Now a group of doctors has warned in a medical journal that if enforced isolation is not introduced XDR-TB could swamp South Africa and spread far beyond its borders....
Pandemic
Jerome Amir Singh of the Centre for Aids Programme of Research in South Africa and two colleagues wrote in the peer-reviewed journal Public Library of Science Medicine that the government must overcome its understandable qualms over human rights in the interests of the majority. Without exceptional control measures, including enforced isolation, XDR-TB "could become a lethal global pandemic", they say.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
This is NOW.
One missing fact, not in the article, that would be worth knowing: How infectious is this, and what is the differential rate of infection for non-HIV people versus those with HIV? Clearly, if these rates aren't dramatically different, this is a very bad bug.
"Human rights" be damned! Government represents the collective, and has the duty of protecting that collective. If it fails in that duty, then the collective will protect itself. And in that eventuality, detainment is the least of these Typhoid Marys' worries.
There is no "human right" to go around infecting thousands of people with a deadly disease that you have.
It also doesn't indicate whether this strain is immune to prior vaccination.
There have been a few cases of AIDS-related TB in New York in the past, I think. No idea whether this is anything similar.
It's hard for us to tell South Africa that they should isolate these patients, when we have passed laws in the U.S. that effectively let people spread AIDS as they please.
When numbers like these are reported they rarely turn out to be true.
As is reported in the article many of the TB victims are also infected with AIDS. Many of the AIDS patients in SA do not take their medication and sell it. They also do not stay on their treatment so that they can continue to receive disability payments.
These numbers also more than likely only count hospitalize TB patients.
Because the majority of these TB suffers are also AIDS patients it is to be expected that the disease would be fatal.
I didn't think there is a vaccine for TB. I thought it was cured by antibiotics? Of course, nothing cures this brand.
Wow! Were you raised in the Soviet Union? That statement is pure totalitarian communist credo! Our Constitution is all about the rights of the individual. Would you like to restate your position?
ping
the problem is that some people who catch it will die without treatment.
Those who are poorly nourished, have lung problems, or have HIV have trouble fighting off the infection. Most can be treated with drugs, but with HIV, your body's own immune system can't fight it off....so the germ ends up resistant.
Usually we treat with simply more drugs (In the "good old days" it was two or three. The last lady I treated, not HIV positive but an alcoholic, was treated with five drugs just in case...
The only way to keep this from spreading is to put them in TB sanitariums like the old days.
Alas,manypeople don't know they have it and spread it...and in South Africa, the miners live in dormatories where lung disease can spread quickly.
There's no dilemma here: when you have people carrying a highly infectious and deadly disease, you prevent them from spreading it by whatever means are necessary.
And while I wasn't writing about HIV, I could have been...
thanks, bfl
So why is this not getting the hoopla that attends the mere mention of the avian flu? Any guesses?
Especially when death comes in about two weeks. It's not as though these are silent carriers who would be locked up for years while waiting for the disease to manifest.
Not that that isn't true.
But I had middle class friends in California whose children had to take medication for tuburculosis. They had been exposed to the disease, probably at school.
Sorry, but right here in the United States we used to have quarantines.
No, you do not have the right to spread higly contagious lethal bacteria and viuses around.
Governments will love the latest expansion of power. Once this catches on, imagine how many people will be "detained" for the common cold.
This is bad news indeed.
thanks for posting this, it sounds SCARY.
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