TB is a very fast spreading disease and because of this comes with various stigmas which harm the person socially further than the disease could ever do alone. When someone is first diagnosed with TB the first and active TB is found to be in its early stages the patient is usually required to be isolated for a minimum of two weeks. TB is undoubtedly linked with poverty, the lower the income and lower the living standards the higher the probability of TB. Due to the easy spreading of TB in crowded conditions, when the people are already malnourished due to the poor environment in which they live in, the disease can infect the people even easier. This causes people to try to avoid those who are known to have TB, even after they are no longer contagious, this leads the public to always associate those who are infected with TB with the deadly contagious disease that it is. The stigma that TB carries is in some ways worse than the disease its self.
TB has successfully been stopped before, there are many examples such as in NYC in the 1980’s and Tomsk in Russia. The current BRICS country’s (Brazil, Russia, India China and south Africa) are the current nation’s most at risk, and are the nations which need to stop the spread of TB. To accomplish this they must follow similar procedure which have been done in the past to control epidemics, this includes finding those infected and vaccinate/ treat those around them. Next improve the health care system overall and focus on the low-income poorer areas of the nation since this is where TB can spread the easiest.
TB in the past was considered to be on the decline but nowadays with the emergence of drug resistant TB also known as MDR TB and XDR TB, these two strains of TB are known to be resistant to a variety of commonly used drugs to treat TB. These two forms are extremely expensive, and also takes much longer to treat. These treatments are generally less effective than those used in regular TB mainly due to the fact that it incorporates injectable treatments and over the long run are harder to maintain.