In the 1980’s, we in the news media didn’t cover HIV/AIDS aggressively enough, and that permitted the complacency in governments that allowed AIDS to spread globally. I’m afraid we may be repeating the mistake with tuberculosis, particularly drug-resistant forms such as MDR-TB and XDR-TB. That’s why I wrote my Sunday column on TB

TB never gets adequate attention, and it’s certainly not a celebrity disease. But aside from the 1.5 million people it kills annually, it’s a real risk for spreading — including in this country. There’s a tough balance to strike between the need to blow the whistle and point out the risks on the one hand, and the dangers of alarmism on the other, but I think we should be significantly more worried than we are. This is a bit like the salt iodization that I wrote about in my last column: It’s an important, serious issue, but it’s hard to get anyone’s interest until we have a mini-epidemic and people feel scared.

Obviously funds are short and we don’t have much to throw at another program. But it’s worth pointing out that several studies have showed a high benefit-to-cost ratio from ramping up treatment programs, because if you don’t treat one TB patient today, you have to treat 50 tomorrow. The Copenhagen Consensus tries to rate global humanitarian priorities in terms of cost-effectiveness, and TB programs came up as the highest medical priority.

By the way, check out www.xdrtb.org. It’s built around haunting photographs that James Nachtwey, one of the great photographers of our time, took in TB clinics around the world.

Anyone out there have any experience with TB? Any views about how we treat it? Please post your comments below.