Africa's Tuberculosis Crisis

Over 2 million people die from TB each year. 75% of those die in Africa. Further complicating this is the prevelance of HIV amongs the population. While It rapidly kills an untreated HIV patient (The body simply cannot fight it off or even hold it back) it also spreads via an airborne vector and keeps spreading. TO further complicate things the treatment for TB while comparitivly cheap, takes 8 months and compliance is a huge issue as well. A fw areas are making improvements, but it seems the situation is rapidly getting beyond the ability to control.

AIDS, poverty worsen Africa's tuberculosis crisis

Actually, FredT, there is a far more sinister and frightening problem in play...

CDC concerned about drug-resistant TB

A new strain of drug-resistant tuberculosis that is "virtually untreatable" is raising alarm among public health officials, even as the less virulent, and much more common, form of TB continues to decline in the United States.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported for the first time Thursday on the emergence of "extensively drug-resistant" tuberculosis, which does not respond to most first- or second-line drug therapies for TB.

The new strain is still rare in the United States. But public health officials in San Francisco, where the tuberculosis rate is the highest in the country, say they're seeing patients who face an increasingly resilient form of TB and don't respond to any of the drugs used to fight the disease.

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This is disturbing to say the least!