XDR-TB ‘Nurtured by Global Complacency,’ Obama Administration Should Take Action, Opinion Piece Says
Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis is "being nurtured by global complacency" and "could spread" to the U.S. "because it isn't being aggressively addressed now," columnist Nicholas Kristof writes in a New York Times opinion piece. XDR-TB is resistant to two of the most potent first-line treatments and at least two of the classes of second-line drugs.
Although Americans "don't think much about TB," drug-resistant strains of the disease are spreading, and "in a world connected by jet planes and constant flows of migrants and tourists, the risk is that our myopia will catch up with us," Kristof writes. According to Kristof, President-elect Barack Obama's administration "should ensure it isn't complacent about TB in the way" former President Reagan was about HIV/AIDS. Kristof writes that Reagan's "inattention" to HIV/AIDS "allowed the disease to spread far more than necessary," adding that is "not a mistake the Obama administration should make with" TB.
Kristof writes that if the U.S. were "facing an equivalent military threat capable of killing untold numbers of Americans, there might be presidential commissions and tens of billions of dollars in appropriations" but adds that the U.S. "drop[s] the ball" with public health threats. "[A]nyone who thinks that drug-resistant TB will stay in" developing countries "is in denial," Kristof says, concluding that if XDR-TB "isn't defused," it "could send shrapnel flying into your neighborhood" (Kristof, New York Times, 12/6).
