There is all this hype about how we can cure MDR-TB. Yet, is it really possible to cure this highly lethal form of tuberculosis? At the present, I am very skeptical.
Though it would be very nice to banish MDR-TB from our vocabulary, we have to face reality. MDR-TB is not like TB at all. MDR-TB is not something that just magically developed thousands of years ago for some inexplicable reason, as in the case of TB. We created it. We are the ones who brought the drugs into environments in which the public was not ready to be cured. Granted, it is not really the fault of the public at all. The areas that are suffering the highest outbreaks of TB are the poor ones. In many cases, the infected in these areas does not have the choice to always get the treatment plans. Sometimes there are not enough drugs to cure the patients and sometimes there are not enough medical practitioners to ensure that the proper dosage is delivered. Even the most diligent people can be infected with the strain of MDR-TB by another person who cannot complete his/her treatment plan. So when it comes down to it, it is not really the fault of the people in the public.
Yet, this does not mean that the public is to blame. Though it is not the fault of the individual members of the general public, it is the fault of the general public as a whole. It is our fault that we nourish this insatiable desire for a Fix-All Society. We want to find a cure for everything. As a result, we kill the weak and help the strong. In the case of TB, this means that the more resistant strains mutate and become even more potent killers.
Developing new drugs for MDR-TB is not the option because the new drug will only aggravate the problem. People will just become resistant to that particular strain of TB and we will be in a larger predicament than when we started.
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