Resurgence

Resurgence - Problem? - Continues

Reported tuberculosis incidence rates in Canada between 1925 and 1996.

The discovery--in1948--of anti-microbial drugs that could be used to kill tuberculosis bacteria in the human body meant that the once dreaded "White Plague" had been cured. Simple adherence to a drug regimen while living an otherwise perfectly normal life was now enough to shake the disease, never to see it again. By the mid-1960s and early 1970s, sanatorium treatment of TB was drying up, and the sanatoria converted for other uses. Within a few years, it was thought, TB would be gone from the face of the earth.

Reported tuberculosis incidence rates in Canada between 1925 and 1996.

Yet, TB is still killing people in Canada, and remains one of the biggest killers of humans in other parts of the world. In fact, the fall in human TB deaths that started with the drug discoveries in the 1940s leveled off in the late 1980s. The number of people dying from this disease in developed countries is no longer going down. Canada's track record is slightly better than countries with less-agressive health care systems in place, but we can not afford to let our guard down--tuberculosis has not disappeared. Predictions that TB would disappear by the year 2000 have proven false.

In Canada, however, hope for the fight against tuberculosis is as high as ever, and researchers are working on a plan for its elimination by 2010. This resurgence of the disease has brought about renewed interest in the fight among people who were previously uninterested.

Major causes of death in Canada in 1926, and in 1990. Tuberculosis accounts for 7% of deaths in 1926, and less than 1% in 1990--included under "infectious diseases".