Mountains Beyond Mountains

Book Questions "Mountains Beyond Mountains."

Explain the term "Tuberculosis illustrates the great epi divide"

Farmer talks of the word epi when he refers to the affects of TB. The world is divided into two major groups; one including human beings who fare relatively well in durability and health and that die of age-related death. The other division is human beings who die at a tender age as a result of hunger, violence and communicable illnesses like TB of which cure is known. TB is thus an illustration of the high-quality epi divide of the poor people who are most affected by using the disease. People in the great epi divide have a lot of things in frequent which are poverty-related, and that is why they cannot escape the jaws of the killer TB.

How many people die from TB? What is the cause of TB? What is MDR-TB? (chapter13)

TB is a lethal and a dreadful latent bacillus disease rampant among the poor due to factors like AIDS and malnutrition, and its communicable ability among people living closely together. The disease kills about two million adults annually at a rate higher than AIDS does. The lack of necessities like sanitary, clean water and adequate food makes the disease spread at a faster rate in poverty-stricken areas. MR-TB (multidrug-resistant TB) is a drug-resistant form of TB that grows when the anti-biotics are inadequate doses of several other antibiotics, a one-dose only, or the treatments are taken erratically.

Why did PIH start a new project in Carabayllo? (chapter14)

Carabayllo was a slum with the worst living conditions and worse of all the poor management of disease pandemics. PHI, knowing the real situation in this area, started a community health system in the regions. Various leaders in the region had requested for pharmaceutical services. Hence PHI had to extend these services to the area by building a pharmacy. Still, there was no health census conducted in the region. Consequently, PHI had to start a new project in the region purposed to provide medical services that were lacking.

Why does Lima have patients with sometimes MDR-TB resistant to five drugs while MDR-TB is nonexistent in the USA?

According to research by Farmer, a TB treatment expert, the dynamics within the TB make it hard for any patient suffering from it to acquire resistance to many drugs within the same duration. However, recurrent and improper therapy on the patients with MDR-TB can select for gradually resistant mutants, thus creating resistant strains despite any medicine and drugs administered. This is what was happening with MDR-TB Lima patients. The Lima patients had already formed more than one resistance while going for the standardized DOTS formulas, hence going to the clinic for repeated treatment created the five-drug resistance. MDR-TB resistance is nonexistence in the US because patients here are only subjected to one standardized treatment even when the disease is recurrent, unlike what happened in Lima.

What are the three myths of MDR-TB that Paul Farmer presents in his speech?6

According to Framer, there are several dangerous misconceptions regarding MDR-TB. The first myth he showed was that MDR was too costly to treat in developing countries. The second misconception was that DOTS formulas used for the treatment of MDR would be insufficient to counter its outbreak alone. The last misconception was that MDR is less contagious and virulent than the consistent TB.

Work Cited

Kidder, Tracy. Mountains beyond mountains. Random House Incorporated, 2009.