Tuberculosis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Tuberculosis - Essay Example The disease is spread by people who have the disease when they either cough, sneeze, spit, or talk. One sneeze can send about 40,000 droplets full of the infection. A person with the disease can spread it to 10-15 people a year with prolonged contact. Tuberculosis is often a difficult disease to diagnose, because of how hard it is to grow the bacterium inside laboratory conditions. Various tests must be done, including x-rays, smears, cultures, skin tests, as well as a look at past medical history. New ways of faster more accurate types of detection of the disease are underway, hoping these quicker ways of detection can help with controlling the disease. Treatment for the drug is given in the form of antibiotics. Long terms of these antibiotics are needed in order to clear the entire bacterium from the body, and is often treated with a combination of antibiotics. However, there are risks involved when combining the different antibiotics, even thought it is helpful incase the bacterium becomes drug resistant to one of the antibiotics. Even with the fast spreading nature of the disease, prevention is still underway. In 1993, the World Health Organization declared that the fast spreading Tuberculosis disease was in fact a global health emergency, and a global plan has gone into effect which aims to save lives from Tuberculosis between 2006-20015. The prevention of Tuberculosis is split into two waves of attack. In the first wave, people who are known to have Tuberculosis are treated, and all people with immerse contact with that person are also found and treated. The second step in prevention the spread of the deadly disease is vaccines. Vaccines are given to children; however an effective vaccine is not available for adults. In some countries, the vaccines is being required to be given to all children under the age of three to try to combat the rapidly spreading bacterium. Several new methods of preventing the disease are also underway. One such