Tuberculosis epidemic

World Health Organization Report on the Global Tuberculosis Epidemic. Geneva, WHO, 1998. 

During the early 1900s, vaccines against major human epidemic diseases such as pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus, and tuberculosis were developed. Vaccines for many animal diseases were also available. In the early 1950s, the development of cell culture techniques byj. E. Enders at Harvard was followed by another series of major advances in vaccine development. Vaccines against poHo, mumps, measles, and mbeUa were Hcensed during the 1960s. 

Raviglione MC, Snider DE, Kochi A Global epidemiology of tuberculosis. Morbidity and mortality of a worldwide epidemic. JAMA 1995 273 241-242. 

The European bubonic plague of 1347 killed one-third of the population of Europe. It is the largest single plague ever recorded. The disappearance of the Aztec civilization was spurred by smallpox and measles introduced by Hernando Cortes and his band of Spanish invaders. The same diseases also decimated Native Americans in what is now the United States. Much more recently, the influenza epidemic of 1918 killed an estimated 40 million people worldwide. Malaria continues to be a major problem for people and their countries today in areas in which it is endemic. AIDS, tuberculosis, influenza, hepatitis, pneumonia, and a lengthy list of parasitic infections continue as important constraints on the welfare of people throughout the world. 

At the end of World War I, medical thought was turning to the possibility that soldiers who had been gassed with mustard, chlorine, phosgene, and other agents would develop tuberculosis. In the early postwar years, publications described efforts to identify cases of tuberculosis among gas casualties. The expected epidemic failed to appear, and attention subsided. More extensive studies, such as that of Beebe, were initiated.1 Gradually, mustard gas became the... 

Reichman, L. B. and J. H. Tanne. 2002. Timebomb The Global Epidemic of Multi-Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis. New York. McGraw-Hill. 

This country s earliest experience with biologies dates back to the infectious scourges of the late 1800s and early 1900s when epidemics of typhoid, yellow fever, smallpox, diphtheria, and tuberculosis were being battled by new advances in immunology. The discovery and development of vaccines and antitoxins led to the creation of a... 

Current predictions suggest that the twin epidemics of obesity and diabetes worldwide will result in an increase in CVD rates, which have sharply declined over the past 30 years, after the introduction of effective lipid-lowering and antihypertensive therapies. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that in 2002, deaths from CVD outnumbered deaths from the major communicable diseases (AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria) by 3 to 1 (2). By 2015, an estimated 20 million people will die annually from CVD. Therefore, with the advent of the new millennium, there is a sense of urgency to address the burden of chronic cardiometabolic diseases worldwide. The information on the prevalence and etiology of cardiometabolic diseases, which is cited in this section was obtained from the WHO and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) websites (2-6). 

On retrospect, it was not a newly emerging condition but rather recognition of an already existing endemic process, a previous epidemic wave seems having occurred in the early forties. Unfortunately, attempts to trace the disease prior to World War 2 are speculative, due to the absence of reliable data and a high frequency of the competing causes of morbidity, notably tuberculosis and malaria. 

The development of pharmaceutical legislation in Tunisia cannot be disassociated from the scientific, economic and social environments. In fact, since its independence in 1956, Tunisia has chosen national public industries in different sectors including medicinal products. Such a policy was fully justified since Tunisian s primary concern was to provide the local market with a range of basic medicinal products to face the prevailing epidemics (e.g., tuberculosis, typhoid fever and scabies) in addition to usual disccises. 

We need scientific literate and informed people to make decisions about such things as major government projects in space exploration and medical science health problems, environmental and population problems, such as air and water pollution diseases such as cancer or tuberculosis and epidemics or the possible effects of chemical pesticides upon us and our environment. 

Corbett EL, Watt CJ, Walker N et al 2003 The growing burden of tuberculosis global trends and interactions with the HIV epidemic. Arch Intern Med 163 1009—1021 Delgado JC, Baena A, Thim S, Goldfeld AE 2002 Ethnic-specific genetic associations with pulmonary tuberculosis. Infect Dis 186 1463—1468 Dye C 2006 Global epidemiology of tuberculosis. Lancet 367 938—940... 

Tuberculosis (TB), one of the most deadly and contagious diseases in the world, is a chronic granulomatous bacterial infection which is still an active infectious disease, especially in India. Multidrug resistant-TB is becoming an epidemic disease and is most prevalent in developing countries, which also have elevated rates of human immunodeficiency virus infection [85]. According to a study [86], a limited number of antibiotics, such as rifampicin (RIF), isoniazid and ethambutol, are the essential... 

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