U2Kitten said:
What about the way TB patients were put in sanitariums in the early part of this century? What about leper colonies? And aren't TB and lepresy a lot less common than they used to be?
The medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer would disagree. Contrary to popular belief, TB is as prevalent today as it was when it was first discovered. In the United States, TB and MDRTB (multiple drug resistant TB) kill thousands of poor children, women, and men who live in urban centers like New York City and Los Angeles (just to name a few large cities). Harlem has the highest rate of infant TB deaths. TB is the number one killer inside prisons and on the street, it kills the homeless we pass by on the street. We don't hear about it because amongst the middle class and the wealthy (by middle class I mean the insured) it has been eradicated due to the fact that these two groups of people have proper access to medical care and can
afford to cure it right away if an infection occurs in their families. I should also point out that the people infected with TB in these large urban centers also have the highest risk of contracting HIV; many have both TB and HIV.
In developing countries, TB is the number one killer especially if coupled with HIV/AIDS. Unlike AIDS, TB is a
perfectly preventable and curable infectious disease . Ask yourself (by that I am not singling you out I mean the general you), what do the people who live in America's urban centers have in common with the people dying of TB and HIV in developing countries like Peru and Haiti?
It's
poverty. Though these people have never met each other and due to economic circumstances never will, external factors like medical incompetence, poverty, and social inequality (to name a few) is what allows their cycle of poverty to continue and TB and HIV to spread. Their everyday reality engenders the quiet rage that Farmer expresses in his books and their stories, are ubiquitous in both first and third world nations where medical access is non-existent for those at the bottom.
Paul Farmer is a great resource if anyone is interested in reading more about TB and AIDS. Check out "Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues," his new book "Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor" and his groundbreaking debut "Aids and Accusations: Haiti and The Geography of Blame."