The global tuberculosis situation and the new control strategy of the World Health Organization.

In 1989/90 the WHO Tuberculosis Unit undertook a special study to determine the nature and magnitude of the global tuberculosis problem by reviewing the official statistics and the available data from both published and unpublished field studies. The findings revealed that about 1700 million people or one-third of the worlds population are or have been infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis with 8 million new cases found in developing and industrialized countries. It estimated that the disease caused 2.9 million deaths in 1990 making this the largest cause of death from a single pathogen in the world. While the largest number of deaths occurred in the Southeast Asian Region (940000) the Western Pacific Region (890000) and the African Region (660000) it is estimated that more than 40000 deaths still occur annually in the industrialized nations. Given the existing tuberculosis situation in the world the WHO has developed a new tuberculosis control strategy the development of which was based on a series of workshops and case studies in the last 2 years. These strategies include: 1) the introduction of short-course chemotherapy in place of the standard chemotherapy to improve the cure rate; and 2) the expansion of tuberculosis services.