The imminent catastrophe of TB

The United States is not prepared to handle an epidemic of tuberculosis, the largest infectious killer, nor are we taking steps to avoid a TB epidemic from spiking here. One out of three people globally, and 13 million Americans are estimated to carry the bacterium that can activate any time our immune systems become compromised, as in COVID, diabetes, obesity, and other diseases, epidemic in the United States. In 2022, 8,300 Americans became sick with TB, a 5 percent increase from 2021. The percentage increase was greater in Connecticut, a 24 percent yearly increase in 2022 of the number of TB cases. Globally, 1.6 million people died of TB in 2021, with more than 10 million people being sick with it.

We already experienced the devastating effects of the epidemic of COVID in the United States, and the impossibility of keeping it from our shores. Tuberculosis spreads just as easily, with a single case of multi-drug resistant TB in the United States historically costing $250,000 to $1,000,000 for a treatment that until very recently took 2 years and more than 3,500 pills, often resulting in neurological damage and deafness!

We aren’t vaccinating our children or ourselves against tuberculosis, because the only vaccine was made in 1921, and has variable effectiveness. We’ve tolerated antiquated medicines because of our denial of the imminent danger.

The denial has only begun to turn in the last decade, with the first new medicines, and new, effective diagnostic equipment being innovated for the first time in 50 years, in 2014. The first UN high level meeting being called in 2018, and the second, just this past fall. Funds to role out the new medicines and diagnostic equipment are needed. The new diagnostic equipment has the capacity to diagnose an entire range of the respiratory infections that can devastate populations and economies.

The “End TB Now Act” is a piece of legislation that galvanizes an effort to eradicate TB, and it needs the support of all our representatives and both our senators, and yet, only U.S. Rep. Jim Himes has signed on. Please reach out to Representatives Rosa DeLauro, John Larson, Joe Courtney, and Johanna Hayes, as well as to Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, to sign on and promote.

Pay attention, our well-being as a country, and your family’s lives, depend on it!