You'd think the emergence of a fatal disease—especially one that can be spread without physical contact—would be a big story. Yet a threatening new form of tuberculosis called extremely drug-resistant TB, or XDR-TB, has garnered almost no attention. That could soon change, with a new publicity campaign in 50 cities worldwide, centered on a series of dramatic pictures by photographer James Nachtwey and an Internet campaign at xdrtb.org. As the campaign shows, TB is not just an affliction of an earlier era. It still infects millions of people, killing about 1 in 6 of them. In the 1990s, there emerged a scary new version called multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB). And now there is XDR, which is even harder to treat.
newsweek.com
Now you may ask.
"Isn't there a vaccine for TB"?
The answer is this,
Yes, kind of...
BCG is a vaccine for TB.
This vaccine is not widely used in the United States, but it is often given to infants and small children in other countries where TB is common.
BCG vaccine does not always protect people from getting TB.
If you were vaccinated with BCG, you may have a positive reaction to a TB skin test.
This reaction may be due to the BCG vaccine itself or due to infection with the TB bacteria.
Your positive reaction probably means you have been infected with TB bacteria.
If you recently spent time with a person who has active TB disease or
You are from an area of the world where active TB disease is very common (such as most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Russia).
Or you spend time where TB disease is common (homeless shelters, migrant farm camps, drug-treatment centers, health care clinics, jails, prisons).
Sometimes the TB bacteria are resistant to the medicines used to treat TB disease.
This means that the medicine can no longer kill the bacteria. Multidrug-resistant TB, or MDR TB, is bacteria that are resistant to two or more of the most important TB medicines: INH and RIF.
A more serious form of MDR TB is called extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR TB). XDR TB is a rare type of TB that is resistant to nearly all medicines used to treat TB disease.
If you do not take your medicine as your doctor or nurse tells you, the TB bacteria may become resistant to a certain medicine.
Also, people who have spent time with someone sick with MDR TB or XDR TB disease can become infected with these multidrug-resistant bacteria.