Tuberculosis - Essay Example

Tuberculosis Intro: Tuberculosis is a deadly disease cause by an invading bacterium inside the body. It mostly affects the lungs, but can also spread to other parts of the body, such as the nervous system or the circulatory system. Over one third of the world’s population now had this virus, and the rate of new infections of the bacterium are reaching about one every second.
Out of the people infected with the disease, most of them will have it contracted in their lungs. Symptoms of the disease include a cough lasting for more than three weeks, chest pain, and even coughing up blood.
The disease is spread by people who have the disease when they either cough, sneeze, spit, or talk. One sneeze can send about 40,000 droplets full of the infection. A person with the disease can spread it to 10-15 people a year with prolonged contact.
Tuberculosis is often a difficult disease to diagnose, because of how hard it is to grow the bacterium inside laboratory conditions. Various tests must be done, including x-rays, smears, cultures, skin tests, as well as a look at past medical history. New ways of faster more accurate types of detection of the disease are underway, hoping these quicker ways of detection can help with controlling the disease.
Treatment for the drug is given in the form of antibiotics. Long terms of these antibiotics are needed in order to clear the entire bacterium from the body, and is often treated with a combination of antibiotics. However, there are risks involved when combining the different antibiotics, even thought it is helpful incase the bacterium becomes drug resistant to one of the antibiotics.
Conclusion:
Even with the fast spreading nature of the disease, prevention is still underway. In 1993, the World Health Organization declared that the fast spreading Tuberculosis disease was in fact a global health emergency, and a global plan has gone into effect which aims to save lives from Tuberculosis between 2006-20015.
The prevention of Tuberculosis is split into two waves of attack. In the first wave, people who are known to have Tuberculosis are treated, and all people with immerse contact with that person are also found and treated.
The second step in prevention the spread of the deadly disease is vaccines. Vaccines are given to children; however an effective vaccine is not available for adults. In some countries, the vaccines is being required to be given to all children under the age of three to try to combat the rapidly spreading bacterium.
Several new methods of preventing the disease are also underway. One such vaccine, when combined with chemotherapy, can quicken the decline and removal of the disease from the body. Other various forms of different vaccines are also being researched, in the hopes that a stronger one can be found.
A disease with such a strong showing world wide, with 2 billion people world wide(2 million die from the disease every year), is a serious concern for everybody. Hopefully, with the prevention programs, as well as research on vaccines, a good treatment and vaccine program can be found, in order to help contain and stop the spread of this deadly disease.



References
Tuberculosis October 29 2006 no author
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis Read More