James Nachtwey’s Wish: XDR-TB Awareness

Posted by Justin Korn

on October 9, 2008

Sorry for the delay on this post, but I thought it was still important to write about and spread the word. With the financial crisis and the election going on, I feel like this story will be buried and ignored too easily.

If you missed my previous post, I let you know about Jim Nachtwey’s wish to change the world; a wish granted to him by winning the TED prize. The story he wished to share and spread was unknown to the world. As expected, on October 3, his wish was unveiled. Jim introduced us to XDR-TB.

“XDRTB.org is an extraordinary effort to tell the story of extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) and TB through powerful photographs taken by James Nachtwey. XDR-TB, or extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis, is a new and deadly mutation of tuberculosis. Similar in creation to multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) but more extreme in its manifestation, it arises when common tuberculosis goes untreated or standard TB drugs are misused. James’ photographs represent these varying strains. Learn more about TB, MDR-TB and XDR-TB, and learn how you can take action to stop this deadly disease.“

I have embedded the video featured on XDRTB.org below. If XDR-TB is even half as bad as it is portrayed by Nachtwey, humanity needs to be informed of this “new” epidemic and act before it’s too late.