Most people living in developed countries think of tuberculosis as a disease of the past–the mal de vivir that afflicted 19th century poets and factory workers, but no longer weighs into modern life.

Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Each year, over 8 million people are affected by tuberculosis and 1 million end up succumbing to the disease. What was once dubbed as a “romantic disease” is now a “disease of poverty”: of the 22 countries identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as high-burden tuberculosis countries, all are “developing countries.” Six are in Southeast Asia. Vietnam is one of them.

According to the 2012 World Health Statistics, Vietnam had 94,867 reported cases of Tuberculosis in 2010, far above neighboring Laos and Cambodia. See the data for Southeast Asia below.

Adapted from World Health Statistics 2012
Note: No data available for Timor-Leste

What’s being done to tackle the tuberculosis burden? Among the many health projects going on in Vietnam right now, Australia has just announced a partnership with Vietnam to assist in the treatment of existing tuberculosis cases and prevention of further spread. According to Greg Fox, a Vietnam-based researcher for the Centenary Institute in Sydney, the key to relieving the tuberculosis burden is combined strategies: outreach must be done to high-risks groups, such as HIV/AIDS patients, prison populations and family members of existing tuberculosis patients;  social stigma must be reversed and greater health awareness needs to be generated. So far, $1.3 million has been allocated to the Australia-Vietnam tuberculosis project.

Let’s hope this new iniative can effectively quell the tuberculosis rates in Vietnam.

Cover photo by sandrabermudez via Creative Commons

Tags: health

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.