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Tracy Hampton, PhD

JAMA. 2004;291:2529-2530.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Long before the emergence of AIDS, SARS, and a host of other headline-grabbing infections, there was tuberculosis (TB). While the disease may have largely receded from the minds of many of those living in developed countries, this ancient scourge infects fully one third of the world's population and kills 2 million people each year, not including the 20% of HIV-infected individuals who die with active TB.

But no country is immune, as travel and immigration have brought the disease to all corners of the globe. Surveillance data show that 14 871 individuals with active TB disease live in the United States, less than half of whom are native-born (MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2004;53;209-214).

Tuberculosis, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, infects an estimated one third of the world's population. (Photo credit: www.sciencesource.com)

To complicate matters, the emergence of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) strains of . . . [Full Text of this Article]