Topic: 2024-Tuberculosis
Country: Mexico
Delegate Name: Alexander Stillman
For millennia, Tuberculosis has been ravaging communities; its spread is quite difficult to control and common treatments have continually proven to be ineffective. The bacteria quickly multiplies in the lungs and starts attacking the body; other parts of the body can also be affected such as the spine, kidneys, and brain. Victims of the bacteria often exhibit the symptoms of coughing blood, fever, tiredness and fatigue, and more. Additionally, the bacterium’s effects often combine with those HIV-which targets and weakens the immune system-causing tuberculosis to be the number one cause of death among HIV-positive individuals.
Despite these drawbacks, many modern, effective methods of combating tuberculosis exist, but unfortunately are not spread efficiently among populations in which the bacterial infection is occurring. Infections largely break out among more isolated and poorer communities, leading to a higher lethality rate due to factors such as less access to adequate medical care, health care being too expensive even if it is available, and a lack of sanitation mentions to prevent the spread of the disease. Many variants of tuberculosis have become untreatable with common medications due to increased resistance to antibiotics, leading to second-line treatments often being required to treat the disease, which comes at additional costs and more side effects for a patient. Additionally, a vaccine that works for most individuals has yet to be developed, with the only existing vaccine being available to young children, allowing the bacteria to spread across concentrated populations of older people who never received the vaccine.
Mexico is considered a country at moderate risk for tuberculosis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); while the tuberculosis rate is not as severe as regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, Mexico still faces tuberculosis as an ongoing health issue. Mexico believes that it is important for both governments and private companies to work together as a collective effort rather than separately on developing a tuberculosis vaccine that is viable for all ages whilst also encouraging research into methods of how treatments for Tuberculosis can be made more cheap and accessible to more underprivileged and isolated people.
Works Cited:
World Health Organization. (n.d.). Tuberculosis (TB). World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Mexico. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2024/itineraries/mexico#:~:text=Tuberculosis,for%20exposure%20to%20Mycobacterium%20tuberculosis.
