Tuberculosis is a respiratory disease spread from person to person through the air that we breath. Tuberculosis, in itself, is a very contagious disease and spreads through populations rapidly if precautions are not taken. An example of Tuberculosis ripping through society can be seen in the 19th century, particularly in people who immigrated to the United States. The issue that arose in most U.S. immigrant groups because of Tuberculosis involved multiple factors that amplified the infectiousness of Tuberculosis. Some of those factors included malnutrition, crowding, and poverty. Most of the people that immigrated to the U.S. during the 19th century were looking for better opportunities, so most of them did not have much money. The jobs they found once they arrived in the U.S. were low paying and most of the time labor intensive, so the combination of low income and high energy consumption created widespread malnutrition throughout the immigrant population. While one is malnourished their immune system can not function as it normally would, so Tuberculosis took advantage of this and spread rapidly. The immigrants were not only poor and malnourished, they also were crowded in their living spaces because they could not afford larger tenements; they had to pool money together just so they could pay for their tenements. A modern day example of Tuberculosis ravaging a society is the situation in Swaziland. In Swaziland the same situation applies as it did with immigrants in the 19th century, but their is something different with the situation in Swaziland. Whats different is that there is a sort of “social stigma” about acknowledging if you have Tuberculosis. It can lead to isolation in their society, also to acknowledge you have Tuberculosis in their society is  to essentially give up the labor that you do, which is detrimental because if you want to live and survive you have to work. HIV is also rampant, this is important when discussing Tuberculosis because Tuberculosis weakens the immune system, essentially is has a similar affect as HIV. If one was to be infected with Tuberculosis and HIV the situation would be dire due to the extreme suppression of the immune system that would occur. To make the situation worse resistant and extremely resistant Tuberculosis known as MDR (multi-drug resistant) and XDR (extensively drug resistant) are a risk if you do not medicate properly if you have Tuberculosis. It is extremely important to medicate properly if one has Tuberculosis because if one does not medicate properly MDR can form and eventually XDR will form. MDR is extremely difficult to cure and XDR almost impossible. Not only are MDR and XDR more difficult to cure, if they are able to be cured it requires even more medication for an extended amount of time.

The World Health Organization has set out to end Tuberculosis using these three principles:

• “Expanding the scope and reach of interventions for TB care and prevention, with a focus on high-impact, integrated and patient-centered approaches.”
• “Eliciting full benefits of health and development policies and systems, through engaging a much wider set of collaborators across government, communities and the private sector.”
• “Pursuing new scientific knowledge and innovations that can dramatically change TB prevention and care.”

It is important that we see to these three principles because without intervention in impoverished nations like Swaziland nothing will change and people will still die because of Tuberculosis.

Help Received: https://www.who.int/tb/strategy/end-tb/en/ https://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/basics/default.htm powerpoint/ silent killer video