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mmunities they will serve. They have made a huge difference in providing funding for DOTS the world over, and funding new vaccine trials, and supporting research for new drugs that can target latent infection.
Nevertheless, someone in the world is newly infected with TB every second, and every year more people die of tuberculosis. In partso fhte former Soviet Union as many as 80 percent of TB cases are resistant to at least one drug. Fanned by the HIV epidemic, tuberculosis will outrun our efforts unless we try ever harder to defeat this age-old-plague.
In 1998 the genetic material of the tuberculosis bacilllus was sequenced, meaning that the details of its DNA "fingerprint" were completely decoded and identified. The information contianed in this submicroscopic ring of code opened up vast new horizons for researchers. They hope to find new vulnerable areas to target with drugs, or new features of the bug to inspire a better vaccine. But for the fifty thousand people who will die this week of tuberculosis, all the gifts of the latest research will come too late. These people are most likely too poor to benefit from the existing drug treatments. And whatever promising new treatments may be discovered, we will continue to face a great challenge in getting them to the people who need them.