Global emergency

Vijayan, V K (1996) Global emergency. Lung India, 14 (3). pp. 109-112. ISSN Print: 0970-2113; Online: 0974-598X

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Abstract

Mycobacterium tuberculosis described by Robert Koch in 1882 is the leading infectious killer of adults (1). The World Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated that there are nearly 1.7 billion individuals infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis throughout the world, approximately 20 million of these are active cases and three million die each year. Eight million new cases occur each year and three million of these are infectious (2). The WHO has predicted that, if worldwide tuberculosis (TB) control programme is not improved, 90 million new cases and 30 million deaths can be expected in the decade 1990-1999 (3,4). Of the 950 million inhabitants in India, 300 million are infected with M. tuberculosis, 12 million have active tuberculosis, three million are infectious and half a million die each year (5). Two decades ago, the goal of industrialized countries with low prevalence of tuberculosis was the eradication or the elimination of tuberculosis. Elimination is possible, if the rate of infection is less than 1% in the general population or there is only one smear-positive case per million inhabitants. However, in many industrialized countries, the downward trend in tuberculosis rates has been either stabilized or even slightly reversed. Several factors including the closing of TB clinics, economic crisis, demographic reasons, HIV/AIDS epidemic and population migration contributed to this phenomenon. Since Robert Koch’s discovery of TB bacilli in 1882, at least 200 million people especially those in the most economically productive years of life had died due to tuberculosis (6). Realizing the gravity of the problem, the WHO in 1993 declared tuberculosis as a global emergency. This has led to worldwide resurgence in research in tuberculosis.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Editorial
Subjects:	Tuberculosis > Clinical Research
Divisions:	Clinical Research
Depositing User:	Dr. Rathinasabapati R
Date Deposited:	27 Sep 2013 09:21
Last Modified:	14 Mar 2016 05:11
URI:	http://eprints.nirt.res.in/id/eprint/422

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