Political Quotes

“I am pleased to rise in support of the gentleman's resolution. Tuberculosis is truly a significant challenge for all of us. It is a disease that respects no borders, that claims the lives of over 1.8 million lives worldwide every year, and that continues to cause needless deaths every day. It is a major threat to peoples living in developing countries, but it is also a health risk here in the United States and in other developed countries. As this resolution correctly points out, drug therapies that are currently used to treat tuberculosis are proving less and less effective as new and different strains of tuberculosis continue to build and develop resistance to these drugs. There are about 9.4 million new cases of tuberculosis each year. In addition, according to recent news reports, it is estimated that 440,000 people worldwide have been infected with deadly multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in 2008 alone. Just recently, the World Health Organization released a report that underlined the continuing threat from the spread of drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis. Furthermore, as statistics reported by the World Health Organization note, parts of Africa face a truly staggering threat, due to the large numbers of those suffering from AIDS in those regions who are extremely vulnerable to tuberculosis. In such regions, tuberculosis can indeed be a fatal sentence of rapid and painful death.”