ABSTRACT
Tuberculosis (TB) remains a leading cause of mortality and morbidity in the world despite the fact that most cases are curable. 1 It is estimated that somewhere between one-third and one-half of the world’s population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. There are some 30 million cases of active tuberculosis worldwide, with 8–10 million new cases occurring annually. Approximately half of these cases are contagious. Between 10–20% of new cases are in children. An estimated 2.9 million people die from tuberculosis each year, of which 98% are from less-developed countries. This makes the disease the largest cause of death from a single pathogen. In less-developed countries, tuberculosis accounts for an estimated 6.7% of all deaths and 18.5% of deaths among adults between the ages of 15 and 59. Notably, the Western Pacific Region (including the Philippines as demarcated by the World Health Organization) has the greatest number of people infected with the M. tubercle bacillus (574 million), the highest number of new tuberculosis cases (2.56 million), and the second largest number of deaths attributed to the disease.
