One Little Girl Beat The Deadliest Form Of Tuberculosis. She Is Very Lucky.

WASHINGTON ― When Baltimore resident Arjun kisses his 6-year-old daughter’s forehead, it’s not always just a sign of affection. His daughter, Sujata, is onto him. “Is that a temperature kiss?” she asks. Arjun compulsively checks his little girl’s temperature for a reason. Sujata is the survivor of the “first well-described case” of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis in a young child in the U.S., according to her physicians. Tuberculosis is the world’s biggest killer among infectious diseases, and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis ― or XDR-TB, which is resistant to the most effective treatment regimens available ― is the most dangerous form of the disease. It has a survival rate of just 30 to 50 percent, and that’s for those who receive treatment. Sujata was declared to be in remission in 2015, but her family still worries the illness might come back. Her family is so nervous about the stigma around the disease that they asked not to be identified by their real names in this report. They haven’t told anyone beyond their closest family and friends about Sujata’s battle.  Sujata contracted XDR-TB at the age of 2, while visiting her grandparents in Mumbai, India, in 2013. It started with a high fever during the last two weeks of the visit. Although multiple doctors in India and Baltimore told Sujata’s family she had an upper respiratory infection, then malaria, then pneumonia, he...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news