TUBERCULOSIS

Tuberculosis has been one of the great killer diseases for thousand of years. TB afflicts the respiratory system and is easily transmitted from person to person through the air. Currently, about one-third of all people worldwide are infected with Mycobacterium Tuberclosis, the tuberculosis bacteria.Eight million new cases crop up each year, with about 3 million people dying from the disease annually; the World Health Organization predicts 4 million death a year by 2005. In facts, in 1997, TB was the leading cause of death from a single infection agents worldwide. Since the mid-1980s, the United states has been experiencing a dramatic resurgence of tuberculosis. The cause of this resurgence include a social factors such as poverty,crowding,homelessness,and incareration (the same factors that have always promoted the spread of TB). The increasing preavalence of HIV infection is also a significant contriuting factor.People with AIDS are much more likely to develop TB than people with healthy immune systems.

In addition to the increased numbers of cases-more than 15,900 nationally as of 2001-alarming outbreaks of multidrug-resistant strains of tuberculosis have occurred. These strains are resistant to the best available anti-TB medications. Thus, multidrugs-resistance TB is particularly concerning because it requires much more time to treat, is more expensive to treat, and may prove fatal.

The basic principles of TB treatment and control are to make sure all patients complete a full course of medication so that all of the bacteria causing the infection are killed and drugs-resistant strains do not develop. Great efforts are being made to ensure that high-risk individuals who are infected but not yet sick receive preventative therapy, ehich is 90% effective in reducing the likelihood of developing active TB.