More people die of tuberculosis than of any otherdisease caused by a single agent. This has probablybeen the case in quite a while. During the __1__
early stages of the industrial revolution, perhaps one inevery seventh __2__
deaths in Europe’s crowded cities were caused by thedisease. From __3__
now on, though, western eyes, missing the global picture, saw the trouble __4__
going into decline. With occasional breaks for war, the rates of death and
infection in the Europe and America dropped steadily through the 19th and __5__
20th centuries. In the 1950s, the introduction of antibiotics strengthened the
trend in rich countries, and the antibiotics were allowed to be imported to __6__
poor countries. Medical researchers declared victory and withdrew.
They are wrong. In the mid1980s the frequency of infections and deaths __7__
started to pick up again around the world. Where tuberculosis vanished, it came__8__
back; in many places where it had never been away, it grew better. The World__9__
Health Organization estimates that 1.7 billion people (a third of the earth’s
population)suffer from tuberculosis. Even when the infection rate was falling,
population growth kept the number of clinical cases more or less constantly at 8 __10__
million a year. Around 3 million of those people died, nearly all of them in poor
countries.
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