WiRED Releases TB Module amid Disease’s Growing Resistance to Treatment Drugs/WiREDInternational.org

he World Health Organization (WHO) has identified tuberculosis (TB) as an emerging global threat. The importance of monitoring and treating the disease cannot be overstated, especially because TB can morph into serious drug-resistant varieties.

Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and WHO are warning the public about the dangers of multidrug resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB. Two of the most commonly prescribed TB drugs do not affect the condition of a patient with MDR TB, and the rarer XDR TB disease resists all potent treatment drugs. People with compromised immune systems are particularly susceptible to these virulent TB strains.

WiRED International just released a new module on TB to our Learning Center. This release demonstrates our commitment to providing medical and health information material which is current and enlightening, and which reflects the latest diagnostics and treatments.

Our interactive TB module describes the disease, its causes and risk factors, prevention, transmission, symptoms and treatments and drug resistance, as well as the differences between latent and active TB disease. The WiRED course is engaging and contains graphics and quizzes throughout the module to help learners retain important information and test their understanding.

Tuberculosis or TB, short for tubercle bacillus, is a bacterial disease caused by germs called Mycobacterium TB, which are spread from person to person through the air. TB usually affects the lungs, but it also can affect other parts of the body such as the brain, the kidneys and the spine.

“The [Drug Resitant] DR-TB crisis is everybody's problem . . . It doesn't matter where you live; until new, short and more effective treatment combinations are found, the odds of surviving this disease today are dismal.”
– Dr. Sidney Wong, Medical Director,
Doctors without Borders

TB is curable and preventable, but education is vital to continue saving more lives, like the 37 million lives that were saved between 2000 and 2013 thanks to effective TB diagnosis and treatment.

Although on the decline, TB remains second only to HIV/AIDS as the greatest killer worldwide due to a single infectious agent, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). One-third of the world’s population is infected with TB (more than 2 billion people). In 2013 an estimated 9 million people developed TB, and 1.5 million died from it.

TB was once thought to be eradicated in the U.S. population, but this past spring 27 students tested positive for TB at a Kansas high school. Although the students experienced no symptoms and are not contagious, they will need several months of antibiotics to prevent full-blown development of the disease. Such precautions are explained in WiRED’s TB module.

To learn more about TB, please visit our module here. All WiRED International’s modules are peer-reviewed and free to be viewed and downloaded from anywhere around the world.