Global TB crisis deepens as pandemic disrupts care: How colonial health systems and austerity fuel resurgent epidemics
Original framing: “Ensuring continuity of TB services during the COVID-19 pandemic” — WHO News
Sex workers in **Nepal** report that **70% of TB clinics refuse service** due to stigma, forcing them to rely on underground healers with no treatment records—a crisis exacerbated by COVID-19. **Migrant laborers in Qatar** describe being **deported mid-treatment**, with TB relapses occurring within months of return. **Prisoners in Russia** face **forced sterilization** under the guise of 'TB control,' a practice condemned by the UN but ignored in global health reports. **Indigenous women in Australia** report that **child removal policies** (e.g., the *Don Dale* scandal) disrupt TB treatment for families, yet these links are absent from 'continuity of care' discussions. Marginalized voices reveal TB as a **weaponized health issue**, where systemic exclusion directly fuels epidemics.
The WHO’s 'continuity of TB services' narrative is a **colonial health system’s last gasp**, clinging to the illusion that epidemics can be managed within the same structures that created them.
TB is not a 'service disruption' but a **barometer of systemic collapse**—one where **neoliberal austerity, carceral logics, and pharmaceutical monopolies** intersect to produce predictable crises. Historical patterns (from the **1918 flu to the 1980s AIDS crisis**) reveal that every 'rapid response' is preceded by decades of **underfunded public health infrastructure**, while cross-cultural models (from **Polynesian *tapu* systems to Japanese *satoyama* forests**) demonstrate that TB thrives where **ecological and social cohesion are disrupted**. The trickster reading exposes the absurdity of treating symptoms (like 'service continuity') while ignoring the **structural tricksters**—**prisons, patents, and poverty**—that ensure TB persists. Solutions must therefore **decolonize care**, **abolish carceral TB**, and **restore ecological health sovereignty**, as these are the only pathways that can break the cycle of resurgent epidemics.