Wednesday, March 4, 2009

why is it becoming increasingly important to immunise the human population against diseases as tuberculosis

why is it becoming increasingly important to immunise the human population against diseases as tuberculosis?

Infectious Diseases - 3 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
The tuberculosis vaccine has never been more than approximately 50% effective. It is not used in the US because it gives false positives on the PPD skin test.
2 :
Diseases such as tuberculosis (TB) are communicable diseases, they are infectious. And they spread easily. As globalization occurs, more and more people cross borders every single day, and a single infected person could cause an international epidemic. As it is, even with TB immunizations so readily available, TB is still one of the top 3 killers (single agent) worldwide, killing 1.6 million people in 2002. Over 1/3 of the people in the world today have TB bacterium, and some do not even know it, and because they are spread so easily (by a single aerosol droplet which could be spread through talking or kissing) infections occur at a rate of one per second! An ounce of prevention is always better than a pound of cure. P.S. To answer to the guy above me, while it is true there is no known effective vaccine for adults, there are for children!
3 :
There is an increased incidence in the US because of migration - mostly form Mexico, where the disease is very common. TB is a very underrated disease. It' one of the most common causes of death worldwide. There haven't been new medications develloped in the past 40 years, and there are new resistant strains that are becoming common. The vaccine is useful to prevent a few cases of disease, but more importantly, to prevent severe disease in the very young and the very old - in this it is effective, and widely used worldwide. It's not used in the US because it interferes with the skin test that's used to quickly diagnose TB

Read more discussions :