All 50 Uses of

TB

in

Mountains Beyond Mountains

Once, from a friend of a friend, I heard he was doing something notable in international health, something to do with tuberculosis.†
Chpt 1.1

tuberculosis = a serious and highly contagious lung infection

The radiologists reported a possible right lower lobe infiltrate on his chest X ray—possible tuberculosis, they thought.
Chpt 1.2

tuberculosis = a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

The tools for uncovering tuberculosis belong to an older era in medicine, and the diagnosis can be tricky, especially in someone with HIV.
Chpt 1.2

Certainly, Joe was a likely target for tb.
Chpt 1.2

TB = tuberculosis -- a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

Of all the infections that can come crowding into a person with hiv disease, tb was the most common worldwide.
Chpt 1.2

And he didn't have the classic symptoms of tb, which are fever, chills, and night sweats.
Chpt 1.2

We're in infectious disease, and we don't think it's tuberculosis.
Chpt 1.2

tuberculosis = a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

Before I say that, though, any exposure to anybody with tb?
Chpt 1.2

TB = tuberculosis -- a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

He described giving antibiotics to an impoverished tb patient, then wrote: "When she received them, she soon began to respond—almost as if she had a treatable infectious disease."
Chpt 1.2

Tall trees stand beside courtyards and walkways and walls, artful constructions of concrete and stone, which mount the forested hillside, past an ambulatory clinic and a women's clinic, a general hospital, a large Anglican church, a school, a kitchen that prepares meals for about two thousand people daily, and, near the top, a brand-new building for the treatment of tuberculosis.
Chpt 1.3

tuberculosis = a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

In Haiti, tuberculosis still killed more adults than any other disease, but no one in Zanmi Lasante's catchment area had died from it since 1988.
Chpt 1.3

Farmer and his staff of community health workers treated most tuberculosis patients in their huts and spent between $150 and $200 to cure an uncomplicated case.
Chpt 1.3

The same cure in the United States, where most tb patients were hospitalized, usually cost between $15,000 and $20,000.
Chpt 1.3

TB = tuberculosis -- a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

In the mornings, I followed Farmer from the courtyard, to e-mail, and then to his office—on the ground floor of the newest building, the Thomas J. White Tuberculosis Center.
Chpt 1.3

tuberculosis = a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

Diplomas hung on the wall, together with a photograph of Haiti's first elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide—Farmer's friend of many years—posing with a boy whom Farmer had cured of tb.
Chpt 1.3

TB = tuberculosis -- a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

An elderly man in treatment for pulmonary tb who makes me think of Ray Charles.
Chpt 1.3

A younger man whom Farmer refers to as Lazarus, who arrived some months ago on a bed frame carried by relatives, wasted by aids and tb to about 90 pounds, now weighing in at about 150,
Chpt 1.3

...now weighing in at about 150, cured of tb and his aids arrested thanks to medications.
Chpt 1.3

And, on the other hand, a lovely-looking young woman being treated for drug-resistant tb, now in the midst of a sickle-cell crisis and moaning in pain.
Chpt 1.3

Long before Farmer met her, tuberculosis of the spine had devoured pieces of her backbone—a case of Pott's disease, easily cured but it had gone untreated and was "burnt out."†
Chpt 1.3

tuberculosis = a serious and highly contagious lung infection

She's infected with hiv and is here to receive isoniazid prophylaxsis, having also been exposed to tb.
Chpt 1.3

TB = tuberculosis -- a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

The list on the wall contains about sixty imperatives—to assemble the slides for upcoming speeches, to get Lazarus a Bible and a pair of nail clippers, to give another patient the wristwatch he bought for him in the Miami airport, to obtain sputum samples from some of the patients with drug-resistant tb and take them to Boston for testing.
Chpt 1.3

Farmer lingers beside the crib of a little girl with wasted arms and a torso bloated by pleural effusion—caused by extrapulmonary tb.
Chpt 1.3

Then he walks back up the hill, to the tb hospital, saving this visit for last, he says, because just now everyone up there is getting better.
Chpt 1.3

Back in 1988, a woman from Zanmi Lasante's catchment area had died of tuberculosis while he was in Boston recovering from a badly broken leg.†
Chpt 1.4

tuberculosis = a serious and highly contagious lung infection

He gave everyone in the woman's family jobs at Zanmi Lasante and called a series of staff meetings to figure out what was wrong with their system for treating tb.
Chpt 1.4

TB = tuberculosis -- a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

One health worker recited a Haitian saying: "Giving people medicine for tb and not giving them food is like washing your hands and drying them in the dirt."
Chpt 1.4

Once they felt better but long before they were cured, patients stopped taking their pills, the professionals said, and patients did this in part because they didn't believe tb came from microbes but believed it was sent to them by enemies, via sorcery.
Chpt 1.4

He selected two groups of tb patients.
Chpt 1.4

He asked all of them, among other questions, if they believed tb came from sorcery, and all but a very few in both groups said that they did.
Chpt 1.4

Whether a patient believed that tb came from germs or sorcery didn't seem to have made any difference at all.
Chpt 1.4

I know tuberculosis comes from people coughing germs.
Chpt 1.4 *

tuberculosis = a serious and highly contagious lung infection

From then on, all tb patients in the catchment area received the full package of services.
Chpt 1.4

TB = tuberculosis -- a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

Just recently, a tb patient from a village called Morne Michel hadn't shown up for his monthly doctor's appointment.
Chpt 1.4

He had congenital high blood pressure and mild asthma, which developed after he'd recovered from a possible case of tuberculosis.†
Chpt 1.4

tuberculosis = a serious and highly contagious lung infection

Farmer asked the patient, a young man, if he disliked his tb medicines.
Chpt 1.4

TB = tuberculosis -- a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

He hadn't missed any doses of his tb drugs, however.
Chpt 1.4

I would say, 'The objective is to inculcate in the doctors and nurses the spirit to dedicate themselves to the patients, and especially to having an outcome-oriented view of tb.'
Chpt 1.4

We can spend sixty-eight thousand dollars per tb patient in New York City, but if you start giving watches or radios to patients here, suddenly the international health community jumps on you for creating nonsustainable projects.
Chpt 1.4

The bus, oddly enough, had once been used as a mobile tb clinic, and to accommodate an X-ray machine, a turretlike extrusion had been added to its roof.
Chpt 2.5

These would include vaccination programs, protected water supplies and sanitation, and at the heart of the defenses, a cadre of people from the villages trained to administer medicines and give classes on health, to treat minor ailments and recognize the symptoms of grave ones like tb, malaria, typhoid.
Chpt 2.9

In December 1988, Farmer returned to Cange in a wheelchair, and while his leg mended, he launched his study to improve tb treatment in the central plateau.
Chpt 2.11

Two days later he was working in his office at the clinic, beginning to feel calmer, when a former tb patient of his, a young peasant woman with a baby, came in speaking frantically.
Chpt 2.11

The years of military rule had exacerbated the chronic malnutrition, and tuberculosis had risen markedly in the region.†
Chpt 2.12

tuberculosis = a serious and highly contagious lung infection

Not surprisingly, they tended to shrug when patients died from ailments like measles or tetanus or tb.
Chpt 2.12

TB = tuberculosis -- a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

For Farmer and Jim Kim and many others interested in the distribution of disease, tuberculosis vividly illustrated the great epi divide, its contours, its causes, its effects.†
Chpt 3.13

tuberculosis = a serious and highly contagious lung infection

Improperly treated, or not treated at all, tb is dreadful and lethal, usually devouring the lungs but also sometimes other organs, and sometimes the bones.
Chpt 3.13

TB = tuberculosis -- a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

Fortunately, an array of good and inexpensive "first-line" tb drugs existed.
Chpt 3.13

Thanks in part to those antibiotics, tuberculosis had all but vanished from the rich parts of the world.†
Chpt 3.13

tuberculosis = a serious and highly contagious lung infection

At the end of the twentieth century, tb was still killing about two million people a year, more adults than any other infectious disease, except for aids, and tb shared what Farmer called "a noxious synergy" with aids, since an active case of one often makes a latent case of the other active, too.
Chpt 3.13

TB = tuberculosis -- a serious and highly contagious type of lung infection

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Best Example Sentences
From Other Sources

Definitions:

(1) (TB)
tuberculosis - a serious and highly contagious lung infection transmitted by inhalation or ingestion of tubercle bacilli and manifested in fever and small sores in the lungs
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
Much less commonly, TB may refer to someone's initials.

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TB in Mountains Beyond Mountains

TB

in

Mountains Beyond Mountains