Everything Is Tuberculosis: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

A large majority of people with TB can be treated with the standard drug regimen, but some, like Henry, have drug-resistant TB. There were fears in the 1940s and ’50s that the cure for TB would be temporary, and rightfully so, as antibiotic resistance was a proven phenomenon. Even so, between 1966 and 2012, no new medications were developed for TB because of the difficulty of finding new drugs and because of financial motives. New antibiotics won’t be prescribed often and are thus not as lucrative as other medications, so they are either not developed at all or, if they are, they are priced very high. This is another problem in the global healthcare system.

Because of their high prices, new drugs treating otherwise drug-resistant TB are not available in poor countries. Bedaquiline, for example, would have been an effective treatment for Henry, but because pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson had total control over the price, it was only available for ridiculously high prices. The Sierra Leonean Ministry of Health could not afford it as a result. For this reason, Henry only had access to kanamycin, a drug that has many dangerous side effects and made Henry lose hearing in one ear. In India, a TB patient named Shreya had to sue the government to have access to bedaquiline, and though she won the court case, she died before she could receive treatment. Though Green finds writing books to be an isolating practice, he does it for those like Henry and Shreya who need someone to speak up for them.