Silent plague
While more and more young people are taking the habit of smoking, 75 tubercular Filipinos die everyday. Manila Times reports that the Philippines is the eight in the world with the most cases of tuberculosis.

I suspect the situation is even worse. Almost every month I buy a bottle of supplements ( to prolong my corporeal existence before I join the Dark Side), and almost each time I am at the drugstore there is someone beside me buying TB prescription: isoniazid, rifampicin, pyrazinamide, ethambutol etc. (I know I should not but I always cannot help looking over the shoulder of people buying prescription drugs; it's my vice.)

One friend who is a social worker in Tondo also told me that in their medical aid missions, a disproportionately large amount of cases involves TB. The tubercular people's medications in Tondo also have to be personally supervised that they take the proper dosage because, according to her, most people simply re-sell their drugs once the primary TB symptoms subside without completing the six-month complete medication.

One matrona lady at St Luke's was also threatening to sue her doctor for medical malpractice, alleging that the doctor gave her TB shots. The lady could not fathom, for the life of her, how she could have possibly gotten the disease, unless the allergy shots she received from her doctor carried the bacteria. After great investigation and medical soul-searching, it turned out that that patient's septuagenarian mother has TB. She therefore got it from her mother.

The above incident is disturbing because it means that in some households TB is already present but is unrecognized despite consulations with doctors.

How could the patients be so uninformed ? Because most doctors are so delicate that they seldom have the heart, especially with TB cases, to be matter-of-factly when dealing with clients. Doctors will show the X-ray and simply issue prescriptions, and that's all about it--sometimes not even an advice to cut down on smoking.

TB severely strains our labor force as TB is wont to attack people at their prime earning capacity (40-65). It also severely drains the income of many Filipino households.

TB is a plague, and we all wallow in ignorance about its perniciousness.