With the last Ebola outbreak still not over in some African countries, two more diseases have people on edge this week. They are MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) and an old scourge, TB (Tuberculosis).
Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome
According to DW TV’s Journal, MERS was brought back to Seoul, South Korea by a man who returned from the Middle East and began to exhibit symptoms in mid-May. Already, it is the biggest outbreak outside the Middle East. In one month, at least 95 Koreans contracted the disease.
So far, all infected have been those who had spent time in hospitals, and the seven who died were mostly elderly already receiving treatment for other respiratory illnesses, DW’s Journal added.
A New York Times June 8, 2015 article said,
“Some experts have faulted the South Korean government for the way it initially handled information on the outbreak. None of the hospitals where patients were infected had been alerted about the possibility of MERS”.
Currently, the disease is said to be isolated to less than thirty hospitals.
Tuberculosis
Dr. Karidia Diallo, preparing an ABI DNA Analyzer for drug resistance tests
Modern medicine thought it had tamed the age old disease known today as tuberculosis (TB), but two strains, known as MDR and XDR TB, now have resistance to the arsenal of drugs developed to fight TB.
America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states,
“In the early 1900s, TB killed one out of every seven people living in the United States and Europe.”
And the CDC still cautions everyone,
“If not treated properly, TB disease can be fatal.”
The CDC indicates it spreads through the air and not just through coughing or sneezing. It sometimes can also be caught if you are nearby when a person with active TB is talking. But, non-drug resistant TB is considered treatable.
However, about the rarer XDR TB, NBC News said,
“Only about a third to half of cases can even be cured”.
A woman who traveled from India in April, landing in Chicago and spending time in Missouri and middle Tennessee, is being treated in America for the more rare form of TB. Health officials are trying to determine if anyone else acquired it from her.
As with MERS, the risk is greater for anyone with lower immunity at the time. The risk also increases if you are around someone else, with it, day after day.
Photo credit: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Read the New York Times MERS article here.
Read NBC News site article here.
