[Tuberculosis and society]

Brief review is made of the interconnections between tuberculosis and poverty and other social factors, with special emphasis on the current Japan's tuberculosis situation. In pre-war Japan, the tuberculosis had apparently an aspect of a socioecomic problem which led to lively discussions. With the progress in medical technology and control measures after the war, such aspect of the disease has become more masked and difficult to see. Often, it is viewed merely as a problem of a small and special fragment of the population such as homelessness, and its wide and diffuse connections with the society and economy are likely to be overlooked. Studies in tuberculosis, both basic and epidemiological, as well as multidisciplinary, should be further encouraged from such a point of view, in order to lay such interconnections bare, on which the new control strategy should be based.