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Chapter 18
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Everything Is Tuberculosis, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science and Injustice
History’s Influence on the Modern Day
Family and Community
Stigmatization and Dehumanization
Nuance, Empathy, and Understanding
Summary
Analysis
In the 1980s, a surplus of severe and swift cases of TB alarmed physicians and activists in the Global South. These cases were seemingly associated with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, as HIV weakens the immune system and makes people more susceptible to active and dangerous cases of TB. Despite this connection and the development treatment for HIV in rich countries, little was done to provide treatment to low- and middle-income countries, leading to “an explosion of death.” Official reasoning for this decision was that Africans were too primitive to know when to take medications on time. This justification is, of course, racist, dehumanizing, and untrue; Africans were more likely to follow treatment regimens than North Americans. Finally, in the mid-2000s, PEP-FAR and the Global Fund helped poor countries access HIV treatment. TB is a “disease of vicious cycles,” one that thrives in impoverished communities and that worsens poverty, adding directly to cycles of injustice.
The convergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and tuberculosis emphasizes the ways in which marginalized groups are made victim to prejudiced and unempathetic healthcare systems. Those suffering from HIV/AIDS were heavily stigmatized for their diagnosis and their sexuality, so treatment was often inaccessible or underfunded, especially for those in poor countries. The same was true for TB patients, as Green has emphasized throughout this book (though they were stigmatized for their race rather than their sexuality). There is thus a pattern of discrimination and injustice in the global healthcare system that leads to more death and disease. Furthermore, health officials continued to use racist, dehumanizing rhetoric to justify the lack of treatment given to these populations, enforcing the presence of systemic prejudice.
Themes
