No 5 iller Crescent, Off Katsina Ala Street
Maitama, Abuja, FCT, NigeriaOPEN 24x7
EMA Accredited Hospital
By Dr Hassan's Hospital • February 15, 2017 • No Comments
World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, falling on march 24th each year, is designed to build public awareness that tuberculosis today remains an epidemic in much of the world, causing the deaths of nearly…
World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, falling on March 24th each year, is designed to build public awareness that tuberculosis today remains an epidemic in much of the world, causing the deaths of nearly one-and-a-half million people each year, mostly in developing countries.
TB is curable, but current efforts to find, treat and cure everyone who gets ill with the disease are not sufficient. According to the World Health Organization, of the 9 million people a year who get sick with TB, a third of them are “missed” by health systems.
Tuberculosis (TB) is a potentially serious infectious disease that mainly affects your lungs. Without treatment, tuberculosis can be fatal. Untreated active disease typically affects your lungs, but it can spread to other parts of the body through your bloodstream like the bones, Heart, Liver, Kidney and brain.
The bacteria that cause tuberculosis are spread from one person to another through tiny droplets released into the air via coughs and sneezes. Many people who are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) do not get sick or spread the bacteria to others, this is known as latent TB.
People who at higher risk of developing active TB include:
·
Babies and young children
· People who inject illegal drugs
· People who are sick with other diseases that weaken the immune system
· Elderly people
· People who were not treated correctly for TB in the past
· People with HIV infection
If you test positive for latent TB infection, your doctor may advise you to take medications to reduce your risk of developing active tuberculosis. The only type of tuberculosis that is contagious is the active variety, when it affects the lungs. So if you can prevent your latent tuberculosis from becoming active, you won’t transmit tuberculosis to anyone else.
However, if you have active TB, keep your germs to yourself. It generally takes a few weeks of treatment with TB medications before you’re not contagious any more.
Some ways of preventing other from getting the disease from you are:
• Staying home and avoiding close contact with other people
· Ventilating your room properly
· Covering your mouth any time you laugh, cough or sneeze.
· Completing your course of medication
In countries where tuberculosis is more common, infants are vaccinated with Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine because it can prevent severe tuberculosis in children. BCG is fairly effective in protecting small children from severe TB complications; however it does not protect adults very well against lung TB, which is the form of TB that is easiest to spread to others.
Active Tuberculosis (TB) in the lungs (pulmonary TB) is mostly diagnosed by using a medical history and physical exam. Doctors may also look for Symptoms such as a persistent cough, fatigue, fever, or night sweats and the results of Sputum culture and Chest X-ray.
Doctors mostly treat tuberculosis (TB) with antibiotics to kill the TB bacteria, sometime using combinations of more than one type of medicines. The treatment can last from 3 to 9 months or longer if required. The numbers and types of medicines used during this time depend on the results of the sensitivity testing
M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
27 | 28 |