BigShinyThing

XDR-TB — extreme (or ‘extensively’) drug-resistant tuberculosis — may well be the next pandemic. Preventable but untreatable, the disease preys on some of the world’s most vulnerable people. A recent survey suggests that amongst HIV-positive patients in Africa, it has a close to 100% mortality rate, and kills in weeks.

Sadly, the emergence of XDR-TB is a product of human error. TB can usually be treated with a course of four standard anti-TB drugs. If these drugs are misused or mismanaged, multidrug-resistant TB (MDRTB) can develop. MDRTB takes longer to treat with second-line drugs, which are more expensive and have more side-effects. XDR-TB can then develop when these second-line drugs are also misused or mismanaged and therefore also become ineffective.

This is Bad News. It is also important news, as the existence of — and need for action on — XDR-TB has been under-reported in the West.

That’s about to change. And you can help.

With the support of the good people at the TED conference, acclaimed photojournalist James Nachtwey has spent the last year traveling the world, documenting the plight of those suffering from XDR-TB.

The images will be unveiled in London on the fly tower of the National Theatre 7-11pm on Friday 3rd and Saturday 4th October. A gallery called The Emergency Room will open between October 7th and 22nd, just off Brick Lane. There you can view the photographs, together with an installation which will track their diffusion around the world. A group of researchers from think tank Demos, together with a coalition of artists and designers, will be working in the gallery, exploring new techniques for the distribution of news photography in the digital age.

This is an important project. If you are a blogger or journalist, or can offer any creative, financial or logistic support, we urge you to contact the Emergency Room and have a chat. For our part, BST is providing the team with monitoring and analysis of the project’s influence on online discussion around XDR-TB. Darrell was also asked by Demos/TED to contribute some thoughts on the future of photojournalism to the project blog.