Tuberculosis

Despite the fact that it was first discovered centuries ago, tuberculosis (TB), according to the World Health Organization (WHO), continues to be one of the world’s leading infectious killers, affecting one-third of the world’s population. While it has diminished as a public health issue in most industrialized nations since the 1940s, according to J. Ogden and colleagues, no country has been able to completely eradicate it. TB is a disease of the lung, commonly caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is spread through the air from person to person when breathing in the bacterium that was expelled from a TB-infected person through coughing, spitting, or sneezing. According to Ogden and colleagues, TB became a neglected disease in the 1980s as global health concerns focused ...