The BBC reports that researchers at the Epidemiological Research Center in Madras, India, calculated that as many as half of the tuberculosis deaths among men in that country would not have occurred if it were not for smoking, and that as many as 75 percent of tuberculosis cases in the country can be traced directly to smoking.

Tuberculosis can apparently lie dormant and inactive in the lungs, but smoking reduces the lung’s natural defenses against tuberculosis.

The researchers compared 43,000 men who died in the late 1990s with 35,000 men who were still living. Of the 43,000 deaths, 4,000 were from tuberculosis and researchers estimated that only about 2,000 of those would have occurred if it hadn’t been for smoking.

The BBC quoted Indian researcher Vendhan Gajalakshmi as saying,

Almost 200,000 people a year in India die from TB because they smoked — and half of these are still only in their 30s, 40s or early 50s when they die. Our study indicates that in rural India about 12% of smokers, but only 3% of non-smokers, die prematurely from TB.

Sources:

Smoking and mortality from tuberculosis and other diseases in India: retrospective study of 43000 adult male deaths and 35000 controls.
Vendhan Gajalakshmi, Richard Petob, Thanjavur Santhanakrishna Kanakaa and Prabhat Jhac, The Lancet, Vol. 362, Issue 9383, 16 August 2003, Pages 507-515.

Smoking feeds India TB scourge. The BBC, August 15, 2003.

Study links men’s smoking, tuberculosis deaths in India. Associated Press, August 15, 2003.

Smoking Worsens TB Epidemics in Developing World is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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The WHO’s basic conclusion is that the tuberculosis situation is declining fueled by the twin killers of AIDS and poverty. WHO estimates that one in three of the world’s 42 million HIV positive individuals also has tuberculosis.

Back in the early 1990s WHO declared tuberculosis to be a global emergency, and the situation with the disease today is much worse.

The cost of drugs that combat tuberculosis is only $10 for a complete regimen of drugs that will cure about 95 percent of cases. But in order for this to work, the entire series of drugs must be taken on a timetable. Poor health care systems in the developing world mean that even among individuals who receive drugs, few actually complete the entire regimen. This not only renders the drugs useless, but also dramatically increases the risks of more drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis.

According to WHO estimates, fewer than 1 in 3 African patients receives the entire series of drugs, and in Russia that percentage is even lower.

Aside from the devastating toll the disease takes among those afflicted with it, there is a bigger danger that a drug resistant form of the disease could emerge that would spread the disease along the lines of India. India is the epicenter of the tuberculosis epidemic with two million new cases annually.

WHO estimates that it needs another $4 billion or so to fulfill its plan to stop the spread of tuberculosis by 2005.

Sources:

WHO calls for widespread free access to anti-TB drugs for people living with HIV. Press Release, World Health Organization, July 15, 2003.

TB drugs ‘should be free’. The BBC, July 15, 2003.

TB advocacy report 2003. World Health Organization, 2003.

World Health Organization Urges More Funding for Fight Against Tuberculosis is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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According to The State of the World’s Vaccines and Immunization, as many as 37 million children under the age of one are not immunized against the six major vaccine-preventable diseases of childhood: tuberculosis, tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria, polio and measles.

Moreover, the inability of underdeveloped countries to pay for vaccines combined with ongoing property rights disputes over ownership of drugs and vaccines in such countries acts as disincentive for further research into vaccines for diseases that plague the developing world.

According to the report,

Today, vaccine manufacturers have little commercial incentive to develop vaccines against diseases such as HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria, which kill millions of people in developing countries, but relatively few in the developed world. For example, of the approximately US$600 million a year invested in HIV vaccine research, the majority comes from the US National Institutes of Health (a public sector institution). To put that amount in perspective, in 1999, research spending on drugs to treat HIV/AIDS was about US$3 billion in Europe and the United States alone. Other diseases fare just as badly. In the 1996 report Investing in Health Research and Development, WHO highlighted some of the distortions in global health research funding. At the time of the study, acute respiratory infections, diarrheal disease and TB — which together account for almost 8 million deaths a year, mainly among the poor — attracted an estimated US$99-133 million. . . By contrast, more was spent on research into asthma — an estimated US $127-158 million — which accounts for 218,000 deaths a year worldwide.

Of course the report ignores the possibility that the relatively heavy funding in asthma is what is responsible for such a low worldwide death toll, but even so the amount estimated to be spent on research into diseases that kill 8 million people is staggeringly low.

Source:

Vaccine policy leaves millions at risk. The BBC, November 20, 2002.

State of the World’s Vaccines and Immunization Report (PDF). UNICEF, 2002.

State of The World’s Vaccines and Immunizations is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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A strategy that can cure up to 90% of all tuberculosis cases, and thus is the best chance for controlling the global epidemic, is reaching only 27% of the world’s TB patients. . . . According to the new WHO report, at the current rate, TB targets set for 2005 will not be reached until 2013.

Tuberculosis currently kills about 2 million people a year, and is the number one preventable cause of death in the developing world.

The main thing holding back better treatment of tuberculosis is money. WHO estimates that countries around the world need to spend about $300 million more per year to control tuberculosis.

Source:

Funding ‘hits tuberculosis fight’. The BBC, March 24, 2002.

Only a fraction of TB patients get the best care. World Health Organization, Press Release, March 22, 2002.

WHO: Tuberculsosis Efforts Falling Behind is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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Enter researcher Peter Andersen with a hypothesis about that as well as a lab full of mice to test it.

Andersen’s hypothesis was simple. The TB vaccine exposes human beings to a weakened version of Mycobacterium bovis — a from of TB that afflicts cows. Exposure to this causes an immune response which will also protect people from the human form of the disease.

So why doesn’t it always work. Well, in some parts of the world people frequently come into contact with Mycobacterium tuberculosis — the strain that causes tuberculosis in human beings — long before having the vaccine.

Andersen hypothesized that what was happening was this. Some people were being exposed to a weak strain of human TB. This produced an immune response which that rendered the vaccine ineffective. People were essentially being immunized against the vaccine. Then, later in life, they were still vulnerable to the human form of TB.

To test this theory, Andersen used a mouse model of tuberculosis. He infected mice with three strains of mycobacteria taken from a part of Malawi where the bovine version of the disease does not exist. Then, later, he exposed the mice to the Mycobacterium bovis vaccine. Lo and behold, the vaccination did not work. In each case, when later exposed to full blown tuberculosis, the mice all contracted the disease.

Vaccines made from dead versions of TB, however, did protect the mice. There are currently several vaccines being developed that used dead versions of TB rather than weakened versions of live virus, and Andersen’s research is the first suggesting that these vaccines might offer protection to people for whom the traditional vaccine will not work.

Source:

New TB vaccines ‘in pipeline’. The BBC, February 13, 2002.

Better Tuberculosis Vaccine on the Way is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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Doherty writes that when the WHO was founded after World War II it had a substantive impact on health, especially in the developing world. WHO played a major role in tackling a number of infectious diseases, culminating with its role in the eradication of small pox in 1977.

But after the victory over small pox, WHO started turning away from focusing on infectious disease in the developing world to most First World concerns. First under Director General Hiroshi Nakajima and then Gro Harlem Brundtland, WHO began to turn away from infectious disease. Doherty writes,

In a world still fighting infectious disease, Brundtland’s WHO has issued statements, studies, and reports on such topics as blood clots in people who sit still on airplanes too long, helping people remain active while aging, the hazards of using cell phones while driving, the importance of debt relief for poor countries, how tobacco is “a major obstacle to children’s rights,” and rates of alcohol abuse among European teens.

Doherty is especially troubled by the recent WHO analysis of world health problems which relied on a measurement called the disability adjusted life year. The idea behind the DALY is that someone suffering from a severe illness or disability is living a lower quality of life than someone who is not. But WHO’s attempt to quantify produced bizarre results whereby, for example, WHO claims that 16 percent of the years lost to disability in sub-Saharan Africa come from mental illness. Any organization that thinks mental illness is one of the major health problems facing that region, however, is crazy.

Doherty’s article finishes with a stark reminder of just how ineffective WHO is and how misguided its focus on things like years lost to disability are,

Nothing condemn’s WHO’s current agenda more than some of its own pronouncements. In a 1999 press release, WHO declared that six illnesses accounted for 90 percent of all infectious disease deaths among people under 44 years: malaria tuberculosis, measles, diarrheal diseases, acute respiratory infections (including pneumonia), and AIDS. The same press release declared that “the tools to prevent deaths from each of these six diseases now cost under $20 per person at risk, and in most cases under $0.35. Yet these diseases still caused over 11 million deaths in 1998.”

. . . we have WHO declaring that 11 million deaths — 90 percent of all infectious disease deaths for people under 44 years — could have been easily prevented with an expenditure of, at its lowest, $3.9 million, and at its highest, $220 million. That is, anywhere from 0.4 percent to 20 percent of WHO’s budget for one year.

What does WHO spend its money on instead? Doherty cites an analysis of WHO’s 1994-95 budget that found WHO spent as much on its meetings and its executive board as it did on immunizations, tuberculosis and diarrheal diseases combined. Seventy percent of its budget went to administrative overhead and its Geneva headquarters.

Source:

WHO Cares? The World Health Organization cares more about its own life than the lives of the poor. Brian Doherty, Reason, January 2002.

Is the World Health Organization Part of the Problem? is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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