COLUMN: Viewpoint – Tuberculosis might have triggered First World War

Did you know tuberculosis helped trigger the First World War? That’s just one of a multitude of interesting things I learned while reading the New York Times bestselling book Everything Tuberculosis. You might wonder why a relatively slim volume about a disease that is rare and treatable in most developed countries has sold so many copies.

One reason is because it is written by John Green, a hugely popular author of books for teens and young adults. The second reason is Green doesn’t just give us the history and facts about tuberculosis but has woven a heroic story throughout the text. It’s about a young boy named Henry, from Sierra Leone, who has tuberculosis in its most severe form and survives.

I did know some things about tuberculosis before I read the book. Near the Spanish Steps in Rome I visited the home of poet John Keats. I discovered he had died there of tuberculosis in 1821, as did one in seven people living in North America and Europe during the 1800s. Tuberculosis was the leading cause of death that century. There was no known cure.

My mother spent a summer during her university years, volunteering in a TB sanatorium in Ninette, Manitoba. She told me that during the 1950s, it was the thought the only cure for tuberculosis was isolation in a special medical facility where patients had complete rest, fresh air, sunshine and healthy food.

When I worked at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, I saw a series of moving sculptures by artist Oviloo Tunille, that illustrated what happened to her and many other Inuit children diagnosed with tuberculosis. They were forcibly removed from their northern homes and sent by ship to Indigenous tuberculosis hospitals in the south. They were separated from their families, sometimes for years at a time, and had no contact with them. Many died in the hospitals, and their parents were not made aware of their children’s demise.

I also knew from family members in the medical profession, that although we now have successful pharmaceutical solutions for treating tuberculosis, it is still a major problem in Canada, especially in Indigenous communities in the north and amongst populations of recent immigrants.

From John Green’s book Everything Tuberculosis I learned that in countries with overcrowding, poverty, and lack of proper health facilities, tuberculosis still rears its ugly head. Worldwide over a million people die from tuberculosis each year.

What John Green didn’t know when he wrote his book was those numbers were about to jump dramatically because the American government would decide to cut their foreign aid funding for health care, which supported many of the programs designed to diagnose and treat people with tuberculosis in struggling nations. John Green says tuberculosis is completely preventable and curable world-wide but achieving that goal needs to first become an international priority.

You may still be wondering how tuberculosis helped start the First World War. If you remember your high school history lessons you’ll know that conflict was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 by three young members of a terrorist organization. The three all had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, which was at the time, basically a death sentence. They were going to die anyway, so they volunteered for what they knew would probably be a suicide mission- killing the Archduke.

In his book Everything Tuberculosis John Green ties many global events, inventions and geographical migrations to tuberculosis. The disease has had a big impact on the world’s history and will continue to do so, unless we have the will and the determination to eliminate it.