Seeking Solutions to a Global Health Crisis

Tuberculosis (TB) is an ancient disease that continues to wreak havoc today, competing with HIV/AIDS as a top killer among infectious diseases worldwide.1 Despite significant advances against TB throughout the mid20th century, by the end of the century, the disease was back on the rise. Even more alarming, doctors started documenting new strains of TB that were resistant to many of the indicated medicines. These strains came to be known as multidrug-resistant TB, or MDR-TB. A highly contagious disease, MDR-TB spreads, like other forms of TB, through the air. The World Health Organization (WHO) notes that every country has reported cases of MDR-TB, although most deaths (95 percent) occur in low- and middle-income countries.2