More to worry about than SARS.

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Rina Jimenez-David

IF this paper were to run a banner headline tomorrow proclaiming that 75 Filipinos had died of TB in a single day, we would probably be laughed out of the industry. After all, tuberculosis is no longer the stuff of news-it's "old hat"-and the last prominent Filipino to have died of it was President Manuel L. Quezon.

And yet TB is still very much part of our national reality. To this day, 75 Filipinos die of TB every day. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) says the Philippines bears the "highest tuberculosis burden" of all countries in the Western Pacific region. With 30 million Filipinos infected with TB, that means about 32 percent of the population currently lives with the threat of TB. And since TB is an infectious disease, then family members of those 30 million are also considered at risk of acquiring the disease.

TB is so much a part of Filipino life that not even material wealth and comfort and the highest standards of health care can protect a Filipino family from it. Why else, for instance, are anti-TB vaccinations considered routine for all Filipino babies when in developed countries the disease is virtually unknown? Why is "primary complex," the early stage of lung weakness that signals the onset of TB, considered almost routine here?

The awful truth is that TB is so prevalent in this country that children can pick it up from almost anyone-their playmates, their nursemaids and other household help, and even from jeepney drivers and teachers, two groups where TB is especially prevalent. True, conscientious, health-conscious parents can ask all household members to get health clearances and present chest X-rays before they're employed, but can they ask everyone their children meet to present sputum samples as well?

To ensure our children and loved ones are completely safe from TB, we need to make sure that our communities are likewise completely TB-free.