China has large prob­lem with drug resis­tant tuber­cu­lo­sis. This strain of tuber­cu­lo­sis is usu­ally caused by peo­ple stop­ping treat­ment, then the bac­te­ria comes back stronger than ever. The prob­lem is large enough in China that it threat­ens to put a huge dent in the country’s health budget.

From the New York Times this Reuters arti­cle gives us one exam­ple of a TB suf­ferer and some stats.

Liu Zhongwu, a stone­cut­ter work­ing in south­ern China, for exam­ple, stopped tak­ing his TB med­ica­tion mid­way through a stan­dard six-month course in 2007 because it was too costly.

“Even though one or two drugs were free, I had to pay 500 yuan ($73) a month for other drugs (to reduce side effects) and the side effects were bad, I suf­fered ter­ri­ble gas­tric pain and had to stop work, I didn’t even have energy to walk,” said Liu.

It is pre­cisely this sort of behav­ior that health experts are try­ing to stop because if the TB bac­te­ria is not fully elim­i­nated, it can mutate, resurge later and become resis­tant to the small arse­nal of drugs that can fight the disease.

China has 4.5 mil­lion TB cases cur­rently; and each year 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple fall ill with the dis­ease. TB killed 160,000 peo­ple in China in 2008, accord­ing to the World Health Organization.

TB killed 1.8 mil­lion peo­ple across the world in 2008, or a per­son every 20 sec­onds. It is not only a scourge in poor coun­tries but also in the West, where it has flared anew in the last 20 years because of AIDS, which weak­ens the immune system.

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