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Background
There has been a resurgence of TB notably in the past decade. More
than a century after the discovery of the bacillus causing tuberculosis
by Robert Koch, TB remains a leading infectious disease killer. In
the 19th and 20th centuries, there has been a steady decline in deaths
from the disease in industrialised countries. This was given a boost
by the development of antibiotics and other drugs to treat TB in
the last 1940s. But the decline began to level out in the 1980s and
since then the incidence of the disease has started to increase again
and reached worrying levels by 1993.
In 1993, the World Health Organization (WHO) was concerned enough
to declare tuberculosis a global emergency . It is estimated
that between 2002 and 2020, approximately 1000 million people will
be newly infected, over 150 million people will get sick, and 36
million will die of TB if control is not further strengthened. These
are mind boggling figures!
So what has gone wrong? What are the factors leading to the resurgence
of TB? These factors include the following:
HIV combined with TB is accelerating the spread of TB
- Poor adherence to treatment and improperly managed TB programmes
leading to the development of drug resistant TB particularly those
multidrug-resistant TB
- Mass global movement of people is helping the spread of TB
- The prevalence of TB bacillus carriers. TB is the most common
infection in the world. Almost one third of the world's population
is infected with TB
Each of these factors will be described in detail in the following
sections :
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