Source: @theatlantic – As the Trump administration devastates foreign-aid programs, the U.S. is both making survival less likely for people with tuberculosis and risking the disease becoming far more treatment-resistant, John Green writes. “After decades of improvement, we could return to something more like the world before the cure.”⁠
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For most of human history, tuberculosis has been the world’s deadliest infectious disease. But “the cure for TB—roughly half a year on antibiotics—has existed since the 1950s, and works for most patients,” Green explains. “Yet, in the decades since, more than 100 million people have died of tuberculosis because the drugs are not widely available in many parts of the world. The most proximate cause of contemporary tuberculosis deaths is not M. tuberculosis, but Homo sapiens.”⁠
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A quarter of all humans living now, including an estimated 13 million Americans, have been infected with TB; although active disease begins in 5 to 10 percent of infections, “tuberculosis is great at exploiting any advantage that humans hand it,” Green writes.⁠
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“In some ways, at the beginning of this year, the fight against tuberculosis had never looked more promising. High-quality vaccine candidates were in late-stage trials. In December, the World Health Organization made its first endorsement of a TB diagnostic test, and global health workers readied to deploy it.”⁠
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Now that progress could be erased. The Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID massively eliminated foreign-aid funding and programs. “By revoking money from global-health efforts, the U.S. has created the conditions for the health of people around the world to deteriorate, which will give tuberculosis even more opportunities to kill,” Green continues. ⁠
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“For billions of people, TB is already a nightmare disease, both because the bacterium is unusually powerful and because world leaders have done a poor job of distributing cures,” Green writes at the link in our bio. “And yet, to the extent that one hears about TB at all in the rich world, it’s usually in the context of a looming crisis … The Trump administration’s current policies are making such a future more plausible.”