{"id":9177,"date":"2025-04-09T11:08:59","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T16:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=9177"},"modified":"2025-04-09T11:09:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T16:09:03","slug":"tuberculosis-is-back-in-the-spotlight-does-the-u-s-even-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/04\/09\/tuberculosis-is-back-in-the-spotlight-does-the-u-s-even-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuberculosis Is Back in the Spotlight. Does the U.S. Even Care?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MedPage Today<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a column about tuberculosis (TB), the world’s single, most deadly-yet-curable infection that killed one in seven Americansopens in a new tab or window<\/a> as recently as the 1880s. That said, it was not until 8 decades later that patients who received long courses of treatment were reliably cured. And even though rich countries like ours now have new and better treatments that can vanquish even highly drug-resistant strains of M. tuberculosis<\/em>, the slow-growing, waxy-coated germ still claimed 1.25 million livesopens in a new tab or window<\/a> globally in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why? Because most TB patients today are impoverished residents of the global south whose consistent access to basic necessities such as food and clean water, much less modern TB diagnostics and drugs, is an elusive dream. As a result, they are far more likely to not only die of TB but to infect others before they do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond presenting the current state of TB, this is also a column about two passionate advocates for modern TB sufferers. For starters, Peter Kerndt, MD, MPH, is a long-time public health expert who, in his most recent job as a senior TB\/HIV advisor with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), helped support TB services in 24 of the world’s poorest nations. Even after USAID’s recent shuttering, Kerndt stayed in Washington, D.C. to continue his TB work. Since then, he has repeatedly visited Capitol Hillopens in a new tab or window<\/a> to discuss TB with staff and representatives on both sides of the aisle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MedPage Today This is a column about tuberculosis (TB), the world’s single, most deadly-yet-curable infection that killed one in seven Americansopens in a new tab or window as recently as the 1880s. That said, it was not until 8 decades later that patients who received long courses of treatment were reliably cured. And even though rich countries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tb"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9178,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9177\/revisions\/9178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}