John Green Instagram – Last year, my brother, Hank, was diagnosed with a cancer called Hodgkin lymphoma. Hodgkin is usually curable — with proper treatment, five-year survival rates are about 90 percent — but still, the experience was terrifying. My little brother is 43. He has a young kid. The world needs him here. I need him here. After four months of grueling treatment, Hank was declared to be in remission. The hope and expectation is that his cancer is cured and that he will go on and live a long life. Now consider that, like Hodgkin lymphoma, tuberculosis is also generally curable. And it’s the world’s deadliest infectious disease. In 2022, TB killed 1.3 million people, according to the World Health Organization — more than covid-19 or malaria or HIV. Each week, 25,000 people die of TB, a bacterial infection that primarily attacks the lungs. TB is not easy to cure — the best standard of care requires between four and nine months of antibiotics taken daily — but neither is Hodgkin lymphoma. In fact, my brother’s cancer was vastly more expensive and complex to cure than TB is, and yet the cost of TB diagnosis and treatment is central to why the disease remains so deadly. 🔗Visit the link in the bio of @PostOpinions to read more