In 1946 the development of the antibiotic streptomycin made effective treatment and cure of TB a reality. Prior to the introduction of this medication, the only treatment was surgical intervention, including the "pneumothorax technique", which involved collapsing an infected lung to "rest" it and to allow tuberculous lesions to heal.Because of the emergence of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), surgery has been re-introduced for certain cases of TB infections. It involves the removal of infected chest cavities ("bullae") in the lungs to reduce the number of bacteria and to increase exposure of the remaining bacteria to antibiotics in the bloodstream. Hopes of eliminating TB ended with the rise of drug-resistant strains in the 1980s. The subsequent resurgence of tuberculosis resulted in the declaration of a global health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1993. Society and culture
Names
Tuberculosis has been known by many names from the technical to the familiar. Phthisis (Φθισις) is a Greek word for consumption, an old term for pulmonary tuberculosis; around 460 BCE, Hippocrates described phthisis as a disease of dry seasons. The abbreviation TB is short for tubercle bacillus. Consumption was the most common nineteenth century English word for the disease. The Latin root con meaning completely is linked to sumere meaning to take up from under. In The Life and Death of Mr Badman by John Bunyan, the author calls consumption "the captain of all these men of death." "Great white plague" has also been used.
In 2017, the country with the highest estimated incidence rate as a % of the population was Lesotho, with 665 cases per 100,000 people. India
As of 2017, India had the largest total incidence, with an estimated 2,740,000 cases. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000–2015, Indias estimated mortality rate dropped from 55 to 36 per 100,000 population per year with estimated 480 thousand people died of TB in 2015. In India a major proportion of tuberculosis patients are being treated by private partners and private hospitals. Evidence indicates that the tuberculosis national survey does not represent the number of cases that are diagnosed and recorded by private clinics and hospitals in India. North America
In the United States Native Americans have a fivefold greater mortality from TB, and racial and ethnic minorities accounted for 84% of all reported TB cases.In the United States, the overall tuberculosis case rate was 3 per 100,000 persons in 2017. In Canada, tuberculosis is still endemic in some rural areas. Western Europe
In 2017, in the United Kingdom, the national average was 9 per 100,000 and the highest incidence rates in Western Europe were 20 per 100,000 in Portugal. History
Tuberculosis has existed since antiquity. The oldest unambiguously detected M. tuberculosis gives evidence of the disease in the remains of bison in Wyoming dated to around 17,000 years ago. However, whether tuberculosis originated in bovines, then transferred to humans, or whether both bovine and human tuberculosis diverged from a common ancestor, remains unclear.