Health policies makers
have only worsened the affect of multi-drug resistant (MDR) Tuberculosis because they are ignoring the severe infectious disease. Health policy
administrators are trying to help the less problematic disease.
The issue with
health policies date back to about ten years ago when there were less cases of
MDR Tuberculosis. At this point, Indonesia and India were the countries that had
the most outbreaks of this disease. When the topic of using reserved second
line drugs was brought up, policy makers deemed these countries too poor. The
second line drugs were expensive and limited in availability. The popular
belief among policy makers was treating MDR tuberculosis would down play the
attention and resources from treating other curable diseases.
Currently, policy
makers worry for patients who do not have MDR tuberculosis because many
countries would start to focus only on the drug resistant form of tuberculosis. Some parts of
the world would go without using direct observed treatment or use their scare
resources on MDR tuberculosis.
Would policies for MDR tuberculosis take
away resources from regular tuberculosis?
The lack of data
about this public health issue is another contributing factor. Now, we are
aware about this disease presence. Since there is nothing occurring to better
the situation it is as if we didn’t know about it at all. Policy makers need
to build an international consensus to understand how badly this disease is
affectingWHO TB Efforts the world and where to focus its attention. Helping the worse affected
countries first will reduce the work load as the eradication process begins.
Policy makers need
to help create or fund a new mechanism to promote the treatment of MDR tuberculosis.
This mechanism needs to be able to reach millions of people so an illustration
would be better suited. Models of care and strategies should be created to
inform developing countries about this disease. Overall, there needs to be an
increased capacity of drug sensitivity testing and reduce the delays in
treatment. Community based treatment models need to be enacted by policy makers
and promoted by government officials. These treatments need to provide a full
course of treatment and provide food, transportation and economic assistance.
Policy makers need
to revise the international guidelines for the treatment of MDR tuberculosis
using new models and strategies. Along with revisions, new treatment and
funding initiatives should be made for the future.
Health policy administrators
have the possibility and power to truly change the lives of the infected
patients. It is troubling as a hopeful health administrator to see how they are
completely blind-siding this issue. I hope that this disease will not have to
kill or ruin the lives of many other individuals just to get noticed by policy makers.
Sadly, in the case
of this drug resistant tuberculosis we see how history is repeating itself. Policy
makers have yet to improve the situation of MDR tuberculosis.
Here is a link to
an article from 2012 where the World Health Organization issues a new policy to
step TB efforts!WHO TB Efforts
References
Global alliance for TB drug development; TB partnership names director of policy. (2005). Lab Law Weekly, , 99. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/225046654?accountid=14541
I really liked your post in terms of content, however I'd like to begin on a point of formatting. I think that it is important to break up your blog post into paragraphs that are 3-5 sentences long. Also I think that it is important to break them up into even smaller points than we are used to writing for papers. This is because of the way that blogs are consumed. I know myself from personal experience that I like to skim many blogs and it helps to have the information separated as mentioned so that one can take it in bit by bit. It makes it easier to approach as well as read. So I think you should format your blog in that way. In terms of content, I really liked your post. You did a good job of making your point because the evidence you used supported your claims.
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