Public Health: Tuberculosis rises around the world

TB is a very dangerous disease. Historically, it is a disease that, all over the world, has killed very substantial numbers.

Now, having been suppressed for many years in many countries, it is coming back - in a new and more dangerous form.

More than 200 cases of the new strain have been identified in China - but it is not confined to that country. Called "extensively drug resistant tuberculosis" the strain does not respond to the usual six month course of treatment. Instead, it requires a two year course of drugs that cost 100 times more - and have toxic side effects.

TB attacks the lungs and proves fatal in many cases. In the latest version about half of the infected patients die.

The World Health Organisation says "is a contagious disease. Like the common cold, it spreads through the air. Only people who are sick with TB in their lungs are infectious. When infectious people cough, sneeze, talk or spit, they propel TB germs, known as bacilli, into the air. A person needs only to inhale a small number of these to be infected. Left untreated, each person with active TB disease will infect on average between 10 and 15 people every year."

Not all infected people become ill, says the WHO, and it estimates that around a third of the world's population is infected but showing no symptoms - in fact, only between 5 and 10% of those infected become ill. And it is only those that are ill that spread the disease.

Vietnam, says WHO, is also seeing an increase in the disease, saying that the country is 12th of 22 surveyed.

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a clinic in the city centre run by the Respiratory Medical Institute provides free treatment to sufferers after payment of a registration fee of MYR5 - about GBP1.