Despite effective drugs and the BCG vaccine, one third of the world’s population is infected and in recent years the numbers have shot up dramatically both in developing and industrialized countries.
 

In 1993 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared tuberculosis a global emergency, so great was the concern over this modern TB epidemic. This is the first time the WHO has made such a declaration about any infectious disease.
 

About 2 million TB cases per year occur in sub-Saharan Africa where the HIV epidemic is accelerating the spread of TB. Around 3 million TB cases per year occur in south-east Asia and over a quarter of a million in Eastern Europe.