Magen

“Tuberculosis is so often, and in so many ways, a disease of vicious cycles: It’s an illness of poverty that worsens poverty. It’s an illness that worsens other illnesses—from HIV to diabetes. It’s an illness of weak healthcare systems that weakens healthcare systems. It’s an illness of malnutrition that worsens malnutrition. And it’s an illness of the stigmatized that worsens stigmatization. In the face of all this, it’s easy to despair. TB doesn’t just flow through the meandering river of injustice; TB broadens and deepens that river.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“It was an illness of the breath, of the place where the body interacts with the atmosphere, a process so sacred that the Hebrew word ruach, the Chinese word chi, the English word spirit, and the Inuit word sila all derive from words meaning breath or breathing. Breath is liferespiration is the most visible and irrefutable sign that we are still here. To inspire is to breathe in; to expire is to breathe all the way out.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“child born in Sierra Leone is over one hundred times as likely to die of tuberculosis than a child born in the United States. This difference, as Dr. Joia Mukherjee writes, is “not caused by genetics, biology, or culture. Health inequities are caused by poverty, racism, lack of medical care, and other social forces.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“But survival is not primarily an act of individual will, of course. It's an act of collective will.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection