Where is tuberculosis usually found?
Tuberculosis is endemic throughout the world – the World Health Organization has estimated that a third of the world’s population are living with tuberculosis. As person to person spread is the usual route of transmission, the disease has become associated with poverty, overcrowding, poor living conditions; a predominantly urban disease. Advances in medicine, such as the survival of many people with auto-immune conditions – and low resistance to infection – has created a new group of people who are highly susceptible to the disease; there are many cases of such individuals catching the infection while in hospital. In recent years, the emergence of drug-resistant forms of the disease has further complicated the situation, and means that the general risk of infection is rising.
