Tuberculosis of the 1990s: the quiet public health threat

Therapeutic advances over the last four decades have led to a significant reduction of new cases of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) and allowed nearly 600 sanatoria to close in America. The number of active cases of TB in 1984 decreased to nearly 25 percent of those reported in 1953. It appeared that the U.S. was headed toward a utopian state of total control or even elimination of TB. However, geopolitical, socioeconomical, and medical factors contributed to an increased TB incidence altering this lofty hope.