Tuberculosis-Epidemiology and Control Issues in Global Perspective

Although being one of the most thoroughly studied diseases in epidemiology, tuberculosis (TB) is now re-emerging with quite new epidemiological characteristics, such as TB combined with HIV infection, and multiple-drug resistance TB. These new aspects can add very serious impact on the existing health burden of TB, especially its serious inequality between developed and developing parts of the world in demographic, social and economic terms. These epidemiological aspects of TB problem will be illustrated in a stepwise way, using several mathematical models. The application of epidemetric model of TB is also shown for evaluation of some TB control measures. J Epidemiol, 1996 ; 6 : S57-S63.