ABSTRACT
After many years of steady decline in incidence, the world experienced a resurgence in tuberculosis beginning in the mid-1980s. There were a number of reasons for this, including the HIV epidemic. Because of this resurgence, new interest has focused on the control of tuberculosis. No truly effective vaccination or other means of prevention of infection exists. Therefore, control of tuberculosis relies on identifying and treating cases of active tuberculosis and latent infection in order to interrupt transmission to uninfected hosts and prevent reactivation in infected hosts, respectively. Obviously, accurate and rapid diagnosis of cases of active tuberculosis is a necessity for this strategy to succeed.
