One third of the world’s pop­u­la­tion has the tuber­cu­lo­sis bac­terium, that trans­lates to 2 bil­lion peo­ple. Yet many peo­ple can carry the bac­te­ria and not show any symptoms.

From this Reuters arti­cle that we found at the UK’s Tele­graph, writer Tan Ee Lyn gath­ered together some sta­tis­tics on tuberculosis.

Tuber­cu­lo­sis is the world’s seventh-leading cause of death. It killed 1.8 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide last year, up from 1.77 mil­lion in 2007. It is one of three pri­mary dis­eases that are closely linked to poverty, the other two being Aids and malaria.

Some facts about tuberculosis:

* It is spread eas­ily through the air. When infec­tious peo­ple cough, sneeze, talk or spit, they expel the bac­te­ria. Just a small amount is enough for trans­mis­sion. Some­one in the world is newly infected with TB every second.

* Nearly all TB infec­tions are latent, with car­ri­ers show­ing no symp­toms and they are not infec­tious. How­ever, one in 10 will become sick with active TB in his or her life­time due pri­mar­ily to a weak­ened immune system.

* Of the 1.8 mil­lion deaths in 2008, or 4,930 deaths a day, half a mil­lion were Aids patients. TB affects mostly young adults in their most pro­duc­tive years. The vast major­ity of TB deaths are in the devel­op­ing world. More than half occur in Asia.

* The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion esti­mates that 9.4 mil­lion peo­ple devel­oped active TB in 2008, up from 9.27 mil­lion in 2007 and 9.24 mil­lion in 2006. Among the 15 coun­tries with the high­est TB inci­dence rates in 2007, 13 were in Africa, while half of all new cases were in six Asian coun­tries — Bangladesh, China, India, Indone­sia, Pak­istan and the Philippines.

* TB is the seventh-highest cause of mor­tal­ity in poor countries.

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