RESPIRATORY DISEASE PAPER

CARLITA WARD
HCS/245
MAY 18 2015
KRISTEN DIGGENS

Tuberculosis and the Impact it has on Society and the Healthcare Industry

According to the American Lung Association (2015), Tuberculosis (TB) is an

infectious disease that usually infects the lungs, but can attack almost any part of the body. In
2006, the World Health Organization declared TB a global health emergency and developed a
global plan to stop TB that aims at saving 14 million lives by the year 2015. This plan appears to
be on track since the death rate has dropped 40% from 1990 to 2010 (WHO, 2012) (Neighbors
& Tannehill-Jones, 2015, pp. 199). Tuberculosis (TB) is considered to be a primary disease. This
is because it starts by a person breathing infected air and is spread by that person sneezing or
coughing (Neighbors & Tannehill-Jones, 2015). TB is very common in areas that have a lot of
people and not enough space for those people; also it is common in places that are not very
clean.
The number of TB cases in the United States has seriously risen due to the influx of high
numbers
of infected immigrants, the homeless, individuals with AIDS who have poor resistance to
infection, and the development of drug-resistant bacteria (Neighbors & Tannehill-Jones, 2015,
pp. 200). Tuberculosis has had a huge impact on society because of how fast it can kill people if
they do not get it treated properly. Current facts according to the World Health Organization
(WHO) include the following:
One-third of the worlds current population has been infected by TB.
In 2009, approximately 10 million children became orphans as a result of TB
deaths among parents.
In 2010 alone, 8.8 million people fell ill with TB and1.4 million died.

 Over 95% of TB deaths occur in low- to middle- income countries.

TB is second only to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) as the greatest killer worldwide due to a
single infectious agent (Neighbors & Tannehill-Jones, 2015, pp. 199).
Even though there are efforts being made to stop the spread of TB it will be very
hard to completely get rid of it, especially in people that cannot take the medicine
necessary to prevent it or do not have the means to get the medication that will
prevent it. The people that are at an increased risk for getting the TB disease are;
people infected with HIV, people who were infected with TB bacteria in the last 2
years, babies and young children, people who inject illegal drugs, people who
have
other diseases that weaken the immune system, elderly people, people who were
not treated correctly for TB in the past, and healthcare workers (American Lung
Association, 2015)
Tuberculosis impact on the business of healthcare is even greater than the impact
it has on society. Hospitals have to have certain rooms that people with TB can
stay
in to where they will not infect anyone else around them. People with TB are also
put on a drug therapy to help them get rid of the disease. TB is now commonly
transmitted in hospital settings because of multidrug-resistant strains, but there
has
been a development of extensively drug-resistant TB strains that are causing a

major public health threat because the proper infectious control procedures have
not been developed at this time (Tuberculosis among Health Care Workers,
2011). The development of these strains could cause another TB outbreak and
completely destroy everything that the World Health Organization has worked to
achieve so far.
According to American Lung Association (2015), There is a vaccine against
TB
called BCG, or bacille Calmette-Guerin. It is used in many foreign countries
where
TB is more common. This vaccine is not commonly used in the United States
because the risk for becoming infected with Tuberculosis is very low and there is
not enough evidence to prove the effectiveness of the vaccine, also it is thought
that
the vaccine will interfere with the accuracy of TB skin tests (American Lung
Association, 2015). The only evidence that the vaccine works is that there has
been a decrease in the incidence of TB in children by about half in populations
with
a high occurrence of active TB (American Lung Association, 2015). Only time
will tell if TB can be completely wiped out and the occurrence of it nonexistent,
but for now all people can do is try to protect them and if they have any
symptoms
to get checked out immediately.

References

American Lung Association. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.lung.org/lungdisease/tuberculosis/?gclid=CLLSmsL_08MCFYc7aQodpbYAIQ

Neighbors, M., & Tannehill-Jones, R. (2015). Human Diseases (4th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage
Learning.

Tuberculosis among Health Care Workers. (2011, March). Emerging Infectious Diseases, 17(3),
488-494. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3298382/