38th World Conference Lung Health: Cape Town, SA

This year's theme was Confronting the Challenges of HIV and MDR in TB Prevention and Care. TB is a disease of the poor, and researchers complain that the only people interested in developing drugs for a cure are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. No new drugs to treat TB have been developed in 40 years. TB is the number one killer of people with HIV, despite the fact that TB itself is curable.

We have an 80 year old vaccine that doesn't work very well to prevent TB. 2 million people die from the disease every year. Ironic isn't it? In developed countries we are killing ourselves with obesity and sedentary lifestyle related diseases - type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, kidney disease, stroke. Half of the world is eating itself to death, the other half starving to death. In societies already burdened by poverty, hunger, starvation, lack of resources and no access to education people are dying of forgotten diseases.

African sleeping sickness, leismaniasis, filariasis and hookworm claim the lives of millions in undeveloped countries but are unknown in the developed world. The Gates Foundation is funding grants to put these diseases on the global agenda.

Thank you trygveberge for use of photo Tuberculosis.
Thank you Willem & wendy for use of photo of TB patient.

Labels: TB

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