Broadening the Mind and Opportunities

Travelling is said to broaden the mind. By, obviously, opening one's parochial eyes to the world outside the borders most familiar, of one's own country. It's irresistible, the urge to travel, to see other countries of the world, to become at a slight remove, familiar with other traditions and heritage, other social structures and infrastructures. It's instructive and exciting, and who doesn't like to be stimulated by learning new things about the world and the people who inhabit it?

Of course there are risks inherent in travel. Airplanes (seldom) fall out of the sky; motorists risk imperilling themselves and others on unfamiliar roads with unfamiliar signage and unfamiliar speed limits and driving laws. One risks being mugged, held for ransom, robbed of passport, wallet, and even one's life. These dangers are present, but not omnipresent. An alert traveller can save himself the grief of having his wallet lifted, and the wary and careful tourist will stay where it is safe.

On the other hand, just crossing the street unheedingly at an intersection in a city most familiar to you could have you come a cropper. That's life, right? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. So we tend to discount the minimal risks involved in travelling and we head out with great anticipation and a huge tolerance for discomfort, since there's no place quite as comfortable as home. Travelling is great fun and a great leveller, but we're so relieved when we come back home.

You've been to some exotic locales, you have the photographs to show for it, the tawdry little souvenirs, and the glow of satisfaction sitting on your sunburned face. And then you get a call from your local health agency with an invitation to show up at your local hospital for some tests. That is, if you haven't been there already worried you've picked up Lyme disease or something similar. This invitation is a cautionary one. Just to undergo a few little tests.

Because it might very well have happened that on your flight of hundreds of people coming back from that terrific trip, some individual with contagious tuberculosis might have been sitting next to you, or behind you, or in front of you - even a few rows removed from your seat. Coughing. Someone who might quite possibly have been infected with a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis.

Uh-oh, what a right royal pain in the old arse.

The Public Health Agency of Canada scientists consider this type of situation quite troublesome. And growing in incidence, as it happens. Some 2,472 individuals who, the passenger manifest revealed, sat close to such tuberculosis-stricken people on flights might have been contaminated. Tuberculosis is an airborne disease; tiny particles remain suspended in air.

"It is a concern whenever you have someone flying who has open TB. It's certainly not desirable ... The more people you have flying, the more risk you have"; thank you, Dr. David Haldane, microbiologist at Dalhousie University. Planes do filter cabin air, so it's the long flights, people sitting for long periods of time en route to their destination, where they're more likely to become contaminated.

A report published in the journal Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease, pointed out that 104 tubercular patients were identified taking flights between 2006 and 2008 into or out of Canada, with another 65 identified last year. Of that total number nine had strains of tuberculosis highly resistant to one or more antibiotics; four of whom had multiple drug-resistant bacterial strains.

Canada may be relatively tuberculosis-free, after our long battle with the scourge, but there are many countries of the world where it remains a distinct, endemic problem. Most of those identified as being tuberculosis carriers were born outside of Canada.

Tuberculosis causes millions of deaths around the world yearly. Within Canada it is primarily recent immigrants and aboriginal peoples who present with tuberculosis, some 1,600 active cases annually. The lungs are affected with symptoms of chest pain and bloody coughs. Not remotely pleasant; to be avoided at all costs.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Committee for Africa comprising health ministers from 46 Member States declared tuberculosis an emergency in the African region - a response to an epidemic that has more than quadrupled the annual number of new TB cases in most African countries since 1990 and is continuing to rise across the continent, killing more than half a million people every year. The Stop TB Partnership launched its Action Plan to Stop Tuberculosis 2006-2015.

The Plan aims to cut deaths from TB in half in the next ten years and provide treatment for 50 million people. It requires $56 billion to carry out its aims – less than $1 per day of healthy life gained, with 14 million lives saved by 2015. At the launch of the Plan, which took place at the World Economic Form in Davos, Bill Gates pledged to triple investment through the Gates Foundation, taking the amount committed from $300 million to $900 million. The total funding gap to carry out the Global Plan is estimated at $31 billion.