Tuberculosis

TB is not something most Americans worry about, but it probably should be.
According to the Worldwide Health Sourcebook (R 362.1 W893), nearly 2 billion people have tuberculosis, or are carriers. This is one-third of all the people on earth. This number includes the 10 to 15 million people who have the disease in the United States.

According to the above source, TB is the world's leading cause of death from a single organism, killing more adults than AIDS and malaria combined. The bad news is that the disease is becoming more resistant to drugs. The good news is NIAID scientists are trying to isolate the complete sequence of the TB bacterium's genome.

Click on the title above to visit the World Health Organization website on TB.