Our mission to make this world free from TB or Tuberculosis bacteria may come to a standstill, as genome of bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG), used for almost nine decades to make the entire world’s tuberculosis vaccines, is gradually losing its efficacy.
This shocking but real revelation is the result of an international effort to map and analyze the efficacy of BCG, which unfortunately is the key ingredient in all TB vaccines. Before moving on this issue lets, go through the situation prevailing in the world about TB:-
According to WHO, every year about 300,000 new cases of TB erupts round the world.
Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, China and parts of Eastern Europe show the highest rates of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis.
According to an estimate of WHO, unless control programs are strengthened, as many as a billion people could become infected by the year 2020.
This really paints a gloomy picture of the TB situation in the world. Furthermore, revelation stating that TB vaccines are losing their efficacy, adds to this gloominess. Here we should not forget that TB not only affects a person’s health but also his social and family life. Moreover, it causes major problems in the workplace, affecting his or her productivity. According to an estimate, every year TB results in a decline in worker productivity of US$ 12 billion. This shows that TB is threat not only to world’s health but also to the world economy.
Therefore, it has become quite important to revamp our strategy against TB. In this new strategy, much stress should be laid on finding out new vaccines or medicines containing anti-TB properties. Secondly, more awareness about the causes that give rise to TB should be fumed among people all round the world so that the spread of TB could be suppressed before sprouts anywhere in the world.
Image credit: BBC
Via: The Star