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The curse of misused antibiotics

There have been some serious outbreaks of antibiotic resistant deseases across the world (and even here in Canada), for years doctors and health officials have been clamouring for people to fully use their antibiotic and for doctors to reduce the number of prescriptions... Well one of the early 20th century most debilitating (and contagious) deseases -- Tuberculosis is on the march again.

It appeared in South Africa where a new strain of TB has emerged that is untreatable even with the most modern forms of antibiotics.  See here

The Daily Mail‘s health site reports. They say doctors are warning “the world is on the brink of an outbreak of a deadly and ‘virtually untreatable’ strain of drug resistant tuberculosis unless immediate action is taken.” Fears of a repeat of the 1980s outbreak in New York City that killed 90% of the people who contracted the TB strain are being cited by those urging action in poorer countries where the disease is spiralling out of control.
Dr Uvistra Naidoo, who treats TB sufferers in a South African clinic, has horrific first-hand experience of the new disease after contracting a strain himself. He underwent three years of agonizing treatment after contracting the new multi drug-resistant disease - only surviving after undergoing a cocktail of powerful drugs which caused life-threatening side effects.

That's serious.  Now to be faire the article also discuses the fact that the vast majority of those who have contracted this new form of TB are HIV positive, with weaker immune system, still it remains a very serious problem.  Here in Canada several hospitals have been closed to visitors so that certain deseases could be contained and treated within a closed community (isolation is the first method of reducing the death toll).

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