Quarantining of Tuberculosis

Essay by jcoffinUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, January 2009

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In today's crowded world, there has been a growing threat of airborne pathogens. These communicable diseases easily spread from one person to another. Many countries have already established systems in which they take action towards preventing the further spreading and isolating of the disease. One country that has not constructed a specific system on how they contain communicable diseases is America. In order to approximate what America's actions would be, people must first view countries similar to America and their approaches on how they contain communicable diseases, such as Toronto and SARS. One disease that people and governments are starting to focus more on is tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis is communicable disease that has started to receive increased attention. It has been getting more attention because there has been new, drug-resistant, strains sprouting. Governments around the world are beginning to structure plans of attack if a case of drug resistant tuberculosis was to sprout.

One argument that politicians encounter is the argument of how to treat infected individuals and whether to quarantine them or not. The definition of quarantining is the restriction of movement of people who have been exposed to communicable diseases. The people who support quarantining state that is the only way to keep tuberculosis and similar diseases from spreading. The other side of the argument is that patients in isolation succumb to certain stresses that make quarantining not beneficial to the individual.

The mass of people who do support the utilization of quarantining of tuberculosis patients generally view it in a Utilitarian way. They support isolation of tuberculosis because it benefits society as a whole, even though the patient themselves might endure some setbacks. Quarantining a contagious disease like tuberculosis will significantly restrict its spread. This prevention can allow the disease not to have the negative impacts it...