What is the future of tuberculosis? How globalization is changing its pathogenesis and its clinical manifesta- tion? How research and medical praxis could interact to preserve the patient’s centrality and to protect the communities from tuberculosis infection? The growing threat of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively-drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is basically the result of the exposure to inadequate regimens which had selected drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis that now we cannot properly fight. Moreover, as in the in the 19th century when tuberculosis acted as a powerful genetic selec- tive force probably enhancing survival of people genetically resistant to tuberculosis but susceptible to other diseases, the new epidemic could influence the future epidemiology of internal Medicine. What we can only do is appropriately treating all the new drug-sensible cases of tuberculosis taking place in the world. But to do this we must design a network of competencies facing at the same time the social, political, psychological and ethical aspects of tuberculosis control by improving the medical training of health workers on technical and philosophical skills. Phtysiologists and Philosophers had started their considerations from the Husserlian concept of “subjective lifeworld”, i.e. the world which a person intimately feels and is effective to by its being actually experienceable, in contrast with the “realistic” world which is a theoretical-logical substruction. The lifeworld of the tubercular patient is characterized by stigma, a deeply discrediting attribute of tuberculosis that links the patient to undesirable sterotypes resulting in unfair treatment and discrimination. Moreover, the current disposition of Medicine – driven by “Technique” – to consider the patient as the entomologist would look at an insect makes tuberculosis’ lifeworld more grievous. This feeling keeps the patient from address- ing his doctor and so his contagious disease will not be treated. Humanization of tuberculosis control system should be the new aim of Phtysiologists.

Il punto di vista del tisiologo e del filosofo sul futuro della Tisiologia

EMANUELE, Pietro;
2014-01-01

Abstract

What is the future of tuberculosis? How globalization is changing its pathogenesis and its clinical manifesta- tion? How research and medical praxis could interact to preserve the patient’s centrality and to protect the communities from tuberculosis infection? The growing threat of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively-drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is basically the result of the exposure to inadequate regimens which had selected drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis that now we cannot properly fight. Moreover, as in the in the 19th century when tuberculosis acted as a powerful genetic selec- tive force probably enhancing survival of people genetically resistant to tuberculosis but susceptible to other diseases, the new epidemic could influence the future epidemiology of internal Medicine. What we can only do is appropriately treating all the new drug-sensible cases of tuberculosis taking place in the world. But to do this we must design a network of competencies facing at the same time the social, political, psychological and ethical aspects of tuberculosis control by improving the medical training of health workers on technical and philosophical skills. Phtysiologists and Philosophers had started their considerations from the Husserlian concept of “subjective lifeworld”, i.e. the world which a person intimately feels and is effective to by its being actually experienceable, in contrast with the “realistic” world which is a theoretical-logical substruction. The lifeworld of the tubercular patient is characterized by stigma, a deeply discrediting attribute of tuberculosis that links the patient to undesirable sterotypes resulting in unfair treatment and discrimination. Moreover, the current disposition of Medicine – driven by “Technique” – to consider the patient as the entomologist would look at an insect makes tuberculosis’ lifeworld more grievous. This feeling keeps the patient from address- ing his doctor and so his contagious disease will not be treated. Humanization of tuberculosis control system should be the new aim of Phtysiologists.
2014
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11570/2804568
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