Abstract
In 2011, 1.4 million people died from tuberculosis, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis is now the second greatest killer of mankind by a single infectious agent, surpassed only by HIV/AIDS. A further 7.3 million have been diagnosed with the active form of the disease, and a third of the world’s population, now in excess of 7 billion, has been estimated to have a latent TB infection, and to be at risk of progressing to the active disease. Today, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, and totally resistant tuberculosis add to the difficulties of treating the disease. In 2015, multidrug-resistant TB strains of M. tuberculosis caused an estimated 480,000 new cases of TB and 250,000 deaths. The lecture will discuss approaches to dealing with this growing threat to mankind.