Group Helping to Fight TB in Iraq

Hoping to prevent a potential tuberculosis epidemic in Iraq, a New Windsor, Md., relief organization made $100,000 available to buy antibiotics for the disease. Interchurch Medical Assistance, a nonprofit association of 12 Protestant relief agencies, provided the medicine for 6,000 Iraqi TB patients to continue treatment until Aide Medicale Internationale, a group that has worked in Iraq since 1981, can take over the distribution program, IMA officials said.

"The antibiotics are already being delivered to various clinics," said Kevin King, material resources manager for the Mennonite Central Committee, which contributed $75,000 toward buying the medicine. "This is a critical way to plug a leak. If you can catch this disease in its first phase, that's great. But if there is a gap in treatment, it will come back more powerful and take longer and cost more to treat."

Concerned that the dwindling supply of drugs, particularly in rural areas of Iraq, might contribute to a health crisis, IMA asked its church and corporate partners for assistance. In addition to the Mennonite group, drug maker Pfizer Inc. donated $25,000.

"TB is on the upswing because it is an opportunistic disease associated with AIDS and other immune-suppressing illnesses," said Don Padgett, IMA assistant vice president for pharmaceutical services. "The fear was many would simply stop their meds if it became too difficult to get them," Padgett said.

About 20 years ago, TB afflicted nearly 20 percent of Iraq's population. Efforts by the country's Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization brought that figure down to 2 percent, according to IMA statistics.

After recently returning from Iraq, King said relief groups are working hard to help restore the country's health system. "The person with TB had no choice in the situation," King noted. "It is incumbent on the world community to help him out."

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