In Ancient Culture, New Battle Starts Against TB
John Donnelly
KATHMANDU, Nepal - The history of fighting tuberculosis has its share of disasters - piecemeal control efforts, resistant strains of TB passed stealthily from cell to cell in prisons, and national programs suddenly running out of money due to political revolutions or even just a change of administrations. And then there was a moment, in the midst of a luncheon at the four-star Bluestar Hotel in Kathmandu on Feb. 23, 1996, when Nepal's early efforts to seriously battle TB were called out as going nowhere.
In the fall of 1995, Nepal had become one of the first countries in Asia to sign onto the World Health Organization's ambitious efforts to install a DOTS strategy, which called for following a series of unbreakable rules, including that health workers should directly observe a patient swallow TB drugs every day for months.
But in that luncheon, a group of international experts presented a report that basically gave Nepal an F.
