DOCTOR'S VIEW ARCHIVE

World TB Day, March 24, 1997

TB, or tuberculosis is a disease caused by a bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The bacteria can attack any part of your body, but they usually attack the lungs. People who are infected with TB do not feel sick, do not have symptoms, and cannot spread TB. But they may develop TB at some time in the future. People with TB disease can be treated and cured if they seek medical help. Even better, people who have TB infection but are not sick yet can take medicine so that they will never develop active TB disease.

MedicineNet wishes viewers to be aware of World TB Day this week. World TB Day, falling on 24 March each year, is designed to build public awareness that TB today remains an epidemic out of control in much of the world. Despite the fact that effective cures have been available for decades, TB still causes the death of millions of people each year. 24 March commemorates the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch astounded the scientific community by announcing that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis, the TB bacillus. At the time of Koch's announcement in Berlin, TB was raging through Europe and the Americas, causing the death of one out of every seven people. Koch's discovery opened the way toward diagnosing, curing, and perhaps ultimately even eliminating this fearsome killer.

But progress toward realizing more than a fraction of that promise has come painfully slowly. Effective anti-TB drugs did not first appear until the 1950's, and treatment has not been available in much of the world. TB has sent at least 200 million people to their graves since 1882. Millions more are still added to that grim total each year.

• One third of the world's population is infected with the TB bacillus.

• There are 8 million new cases of TB each year and 3 million people die of the disease (170,000 cases are children).

• TB is the leading cause of death in HIV-infected persons.

• In 1995, 36% of new U.S. cases were in foreign-born persons.

TB disease was once the leading cause of death in the U.S. In the 1940's, scientists discovered the first of several drugs now used to treat TB. As a result, TB slowly began to disappear in the United States with a 6% decrease per year in TB cases for more than 3 decades. But, between 1985 and 1992 TB cases increased. The most alarming problems were multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB outbreaks, primarily in hospitals and correctional facilities. Outbreaks resulted in high death rates and transmission to health care workers.

It is estimated that 10-15 million Americans are infected with TB and, this pool of infected persons is the source of many future cases.

For more information, please visit the TUBERCULOSIS site of MedicineNet.