# 797
While 99% of this blog is devoted to avian flu, every once in awhile I do bring up non-flu emerging infectious diseases. There are a lot of them out there capable of impacting our lives. One of the most worrisome is XDR-TB.
Helen Branswell, perhaps the hardest working journalist on the influenza front, has an article today on XDR-TB, or Extreme Drug Resistant Tuberculosis. When Ms. Branswell writes an article, I know in advance two things.
First, it will be extremely well written. And second, it will be on something important.
I will only present a sample; you need to follow the link to read the entire article. It is a not so gentle reminder that we face multiple pathogenic threats in the world, and that we dare not turn our backs to them.
Extensively drug resistant tuberculosis like bird flu 'running in molasses'
Helen Branswell, Canadian Press
Published: Tuesday, May 22, 2007TORONTO (CP) - Extensively drug resistant tuberculosis - a strain of the TB bug that is effectively immune to the power of most antibiotics - is a looming crisis that is underappreciated by much of the world, experts at a major infectious diseases conference suggested Tuesday.
"What is known amongst the technocrats is somehow not getting out to the general public," admitted Dr. Peter Small, senior program officer for tuberculosis with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
"The fact is that tuberculosis is killing someone every 15 seconds. And an increasing percentage of those cases are resistant to the drugs we have for treating them." "This is a huge issue which is not being addressed and is not generally appreciated."
Small and others were speaking at the general meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, a major gathering of microbiologists and infectious diseases experts from across North America.
While 37 countries - including Canada - have reported cases of XDR-TB, as it is called, experts admit they have no clear idea of how many cases exist worldwide.
The problem? Some of the parts of the world where TB rates are highest have little capacity to test whether the bacteria that infect individual cases are resistant to antibiotics.
Dr. Ruth Berkelman, director of the Center for Public Health Preparedness and Research at Emory University in Atlanta, said building up global capacity to rapidly test TB isolates for antibiotic resistance is an urgent priority in the response to XDR-TB.
"It's no longer a question of whether we can afford to have laboratories in those countries. We can't afford not to have good laboratories in those countries," Berkelman said.
