February Blog post

 February Blog post:

TOTAL HOURS: 3 hours

RESULTS - meeting 2 hours

I attended a meeting as part of the public health organization RESULTS. During the meeting, we discussed planning meetings with local members of Congress, to present the organization to them. 

RESULTS Letter to the Editor - 1 hour 

I wrote a letter to the editor, which I submitted to the Dallas Morning News for the opinions section, about tuberculosis. In my letter, I appealed to members of Congress to sign onto a bill in order to pass an act called the End TB Now Act, which authorizes actions, including the provision of international assistance, to combat tuberculosis by the U.S. government, and allows the president to provide international assistance for the prevention, treatment, control, and elimination of tuberculosis. The act also allows the President to establish goals for U.S. efforts to detect, cure, and prevent all forms of tuberculosis globally.

My letter can be found below:

Tuberculosis is a bacterial respiratory disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis that attacks the lungs. If left untreated, TB can be fatal. Inadequate use and mismanagement of TB therapeutics can lead to the development of drug-resistant TB. 
Over the past 200 years, TB has killed more people than malaria, cholera, influenza, polio, ebola, and HIV combined. 
An estimated 10.6 million people fell ill with TV in 2021 globally, and 1.6 million succumbed to the disease. High-incidence countries including India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and the Democratic Republic of Congo account for 87% of new TB cases. 
However, TB is also incident in the United States with a national increase in the incidence of reported cases rising 9.4% in 2021 compared to 2020. 7,680 TB cases were reported to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National TB surveillance system. 
Congress has the opportunity to make End TB Now Act a priority in 2023 to provide resources for testing, treatment, and eradication of TB in endemic countries. 
I urge our newly elected Texas representatives to set a new example to reduce the global and national burdens of Tuberculosis through the End TB Now Act.