CLASSICAL GRAY.

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease, severe, caused by a bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, called bacillus of Koch in honor of the scientist Robert Koch who described it in 1882. Great Terror of the ninth century and well into the twentieth century, became responsible for one death in four in England in 1815, also in 1916 was responsible for one in six deaths in France. Without treatment, claimed thousands of lives, especially among younger, we would like some celebrities suffer from the "classical gap" as it was known in Europe, according to the pale color of their bearers. So Anton Chekhov, Russian writer (44 years), George Orwel, British writer (46 years), Julio Diniz, a Portuguese writer (31 years) and the Brazilian Alvares de Azevedo (20 years), Castro Alves (24 years), José de Alencar (48 years), Manoel Bandeira (82 years) and Noel Rosa (26 years) are just some famous among thousands of victims of great evil. Until 1946 there was no treatment for the disease that until now could only be prevented, since its mode of transmission was known, but the appearance of streptomycin in this year brought great upheaval and relief for everyone. With the advent of new drugs and the combination of three of them, rifampin, isoniazid and pyrazinamide is what we mean by Schedule I that is able to cure the patient in 6 months without the need for hospitalization, taking the most optimistic to extol its complete eradication 2010, which did not happen. Patients misdirected, abandoned treatments, the emergence of AIDS, drug use led to an increase in the number of patients and the emergence of resistant strains led the World Health Organization (WHO) to a global alert in 2003 and the proposed DOTS (Treatment Directly Supervised) strategy to control the disease.
The big problem is that TB transmission is made from person to person by inhalation of the bacillus that is played in the air when the patient sneezes, coughs, speaks, sings, spits. Each sneeze jumping in the air about 2 million bacilli by coughing and 3.5 thousand particles of the same, which when inhaled by anyone will settle in the lungs and if the same meet with weakened immune defenses, could ill . Predominantly a complaint from developing countries, the bacillus is the lack of sanitation, substandard housing and slums and shacks on the outskirts of large cities, lack of education and poor nutrition of the population, an ideal environment for its spread. Penitentiary archaic with its fetid cells, promiscuous, with prisoners stacked on each other, complete this gloomy picture, especially in Brazil. Slow developing disease, its main symptoms are cough (with purulent) for over twenty-one days, weight loss, listlessness, lack of appetite, mild fever in the afternoon and night sweats. Easy to diagnose and treatment known today, every year 60 million people are infected with tuberculosis, with 2.5 million deaths. Without a more adequate control, it is estimated that 1.5 billion people may become ill until 2020.
Tuberculosis is a disease control and treatment of primary responsibility for health, a simple examination of sputum (smear) is sufficient for diagnosis. A chest X-ray guided the doctor about the degree of pulmonary lesions and, if the health worker can directly supervise the treatment, where we are failing? We know that every person with a productive cough for more than twenty-one days is considered a "respiratory symptoms and possible to be a carrier of doença.Temos examining them, as they are identified early and treated appropriately, we are preventing the spread disease. Poor knowledge of physicians who think of everything, but tuberculosis and neglect of managers are leading us to believe that we are facing a problem of unforeseen consequences.
Right now, the Government announced with all the pomp, the construction of thousands of health clinics as a great goals of the PAC (Program to Accelerate Growth) in almost all municipalities. Of course, entitled to inaugurations and political speeches for all gostos.Como maintenance and staffing for the same should be the responsibility of municipalities, we risk seeing them turn into white elephants formidable spread over every corner of Brazil manly. The installation of a simple microscope and hiring a coach for the existing units would be a tremendous breakthrough in the case of the control and treatment of tuberculosis. Diseases such as tuberculosis, dengue, malaria, Chagas disease and leprosy, need more stock than buildings. Is it so hard the authorities responsible for public health in Egypt, see that?
In conclusion, I repeat what I have placed elsewhere in this blog. 2010 is an election year, we choose which future we want, and analyze the candidates' proposals for health. We are facing a disease that terrorized the world for centuries, the belief we have it mastered, but in front of acquired resistance for the reasons explained here, and it is incurable forms, we run the serious risk of the evil of the twentieth century come to also transform the Great Public Health Problem of the eleventh century.