Tuberculosis… Shouldn’t it be gone?

Tuberculosis is caused by bacteria and is tough on the lungs. Tuberculosis is easily spread through the air. Tuberculosis was trampled immensely in the 2 decades prior to 2014. In the recent years, there have been many new strains arising. Among these strains, there are still a lot of TB drug – resistant strains. This means we should worry about the number of infected getting high again, due to lack of drugs available for effective treatment. Finding new ways to combat TB are expensive. That is why there are foundations, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help these efforts. Like they do for many other diseases, the Gates’ donate to finding new ways to cure. On their webpage they discuss that their hope is to have an even more effective vaccine, to reduce the number of infected, which will reduce the need for drugs. The current approaches are inadequate and the Gates’ believe there should better practices in place from prevention to treatment.

Since seeing the advances slowing down, organizations like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have put plans in place to re-vamp their approach to Tuberculosis. In September of 2018 the NIH made a plan to hope to eliminate or greatly reduce TB. Because of this new plan, 2019 was a groundbreaking year for making steps forward. There was a trial that studied people of all ages living in the home with people who had drug resistant TB. These were the core people. If they could figure out hope for them, they could move onto protecting the others. They tried administering the BCG vaccine (the world’s only licensed vaccine) intravenously instead of the usual intra dermal route in hopes to be more effective. Sure enough, it must have shown something because they had enough promising evidence to continue looking into it. Tuberculosis is a beast, and without people willing to donate, study, and research, we wouldn’t be where we are with it today.

In my lifetime I hope to see tuberculosis completely eradicated. I feel like we live in a world where medicine changes every day. Look at where we are now with COVID-19. If someone would’ve told me that this is what I would be doing in 2020, I would have had them sent for counseling. But, the good part of this is that we never know what’s coming. I hope that there is something that pops up tomorrow, next year, next decade, or as soon as possible to rid TBf from the world. The authors at the NIH note that the hope for 2020 is to build the momentum and the excitement for seeing advances for TB.