A Miner-Led Tuberculosis Epidemic?

Recent medical research has revealed a link between tuberculosis rates and mineral mining in Africa.  It's sobering that it's surprising — really, shouldn't we have thought of this sooner? — but now it's official: a consortium of researchers who looked at 44 African countries has found a relationship between TB and mineral mining.

That's obviously bad enough. But here's the scary part: African mines often rely on foreign laborers — in  South Africa, the study says, 40% of miners come from other countries.

That means TB-free isn't just yet another thing to ask your local Zales dealer to check off before you buy the engagement rock.  This has global health pandemic written all over it.

The rate of transnational movement of industrial laborers known to have high rates of TB would be bad enough, if we were tracking it. But we're not. The American Journal of Public Health article says that so far, no one has studied how much of the TB in the world can be traced back to exposure from miners or ex-miners.

That's no easy task, of course.  Think how hard it was just to quarantine swine flu or SARS patients (even assuming that's the best course of treatment).  Now try to imagine proving, statistically, that
their illness is related to work they did in a foreign country. Suddenly you've got border guards everywhere holding people with South African visa stamps in indefinite medical detention.  (What, you don't remember that plenty of places did that to travelers from Mexico?)

The difficulty of doing the trace, and the fact that no one has asked the question until now, makes diamond-induced TB another known unknown.  Bill Gates, if you're listening, this one might be worth a few million.

Photo Credit: Tambako the Jaguar