Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis- The Fully Sick Rapper

A third of the world's population is infected with TB bacilli (the microbes that cause TB) according to the WHO. TB drug resistance is also major public health problem. MDR TB especially is all kinds of nastiness. I came across a few videos of a guy (he calls himself the Fully Sick Rapper) who was infected with MDR TB and quarantined in a hospital for 6 months in Australia. During that time he made a bunch of pretty funny videos that also draw attention to the public health problem and describes being on DOT (directly observed therapy). He's also raised money for Doctors without Borders while he was in quarantine, which is pretty cool. His videos have been seen by over a half a million people- a pretty incredible way to draw attention to MDR TB if you ask me.

Here's the link to his first video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxQwJ_bJUXA


Anyways, if you are really interested in drug resistant TB surveillance I would recommend the WHO report Anti-tuberculosis drug resistance in the world.
http://www.who.int/tb/publications/2008/drs_report4_26feb08.pdf

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