ACTA FAC MED NAISS 2021;38(3):210-224

UDC:616.24-002.5
 DOI:10.5937/afmnai38-30478  

                                            

Review article

The Burden of Tuberculosis as a Permanent Medical and
Legal Challenge for Mankind through Centuries

 

Milan Radović1,2,3, Aleksandar Đorđević4, Borislav Božanić1

 

1Clinic for Pulmonary Diseases, University Clinical Center Niš, Niš, Serbia
 2Clinic for Thoracic Surgery, University Clinical Center Niš, Niš, Serbia
 3University of Niš, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Niš, Serbia
4University of Niš, Faculty of Law, Chair of Legal History, Niš, Serbia

 

 SUMMARY

             

             

                

                Tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious disease, and throughout human history, it has been permanently opening numerous medical and legal questions, for which the answers are implied by the current social circumstances.

                In ancient times, insufficient knowledge of the etiopathogenesis of TB resulted in discrimination and isolation of patients. In the Middle Ages, kings used TB as a disease to secure their political power over the citizens, while TB culturally took a romanticized form during the 19th and 20th centuries, together with a great social phobia of contagion, disease, and dying on the other hand. Stereotypes were formed around all TB victims, while society tried to understand the nature of the disease and establish a civilizational relationship with it as a health problem having numerous social implications. Modern public health measures for the control of the TB pandemic were established after the discovery of the Koch bacillus in the 19th century. The invention and mass use of the BCG vaccine, the discovery of streptomycin and isoniazid, and the new era of TB treatment, with the consequent emergence of drug resistance, co-epidemic with AIDS, neglect of public health facilities and the current COVID-19 pandemics threaten many legal rights of the infected and the sick and pose new challenges in its global elimination.

                Numerous attempts by society over the centuries to devise preventive and therapeutic measures for TB, through different levels of social obligations and activities, have had and continue to have a profound impact on the human race, shaping its further response to the victims of this deadly disease.

 

Key words: tuberculosis, history, legal power, legal rights