1 Better Control of TB Seen If a Faster Cure Is Found 1 / 15

The World Health Organization1 estimates that about one-third of all people are infected with bacteria that cause tuberculosis . Most times, the infection remains inactive. But each year about eight million people develop active cases of TB, usually in their Two million people die of it. The disease has with the spread of AIDS and drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis.

Current treatments take at least six months. People have to a combination of several antibiotic drugs daily. But many people stop they feel better. Doing that can to an infection that resists treatment. Public health experts agree that a faster-acting cure for tuberculosis would be more effective. Now a study estimates just how it might be. A professor of international health at Harvard University2 led the study. Joshua Salomon says a shorter treatment program would likely mean not just more patients . It would also mean infectious patients who can pass on their infection to others.

The researchers developed a mathematical model to examine the effects of a two-month treatment plan. They the model with current TB conditions in Southeast Asia. The scientists found that a two-month treatment could prevent about twenty percent of new cases. And it might about twenty-five percent of TB deaths. The model shows that these would take place between two thousand twelve and two thousand thirty. That is, if a faster cure is developed and in wide use by two thousand twelve.

The World Health Organization the DOTS3 program in nineteen ninety. DOTS is Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course. Health workers watch tuberculosis patients take their daily pills to make they continue treatment.

a now are more than forty years old. The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development4 says its long-term goal is a treatment that could work in as few as ten doses. 2 Influenza （新增）

Influenza has been with us a long time. According some Greek writers on medical history, the outbreak of 412 B.C. was of influenza. The same has been suggested of the sickness that swept through the Greek army Syracuse in 395 B.C. Flu is a disease that moves most quickly among people in crowded conditions, hence, it is likely to attack armies.

During the nineteenth century there were five widespread of influenza. The last of the five in 1889 and marked the beginning of the story of influenza in our time. Like the recent outbreak, started in Asia.

For more than forty years before that outbreak, influenza had steadily and was believed to be dying out. A new group of outbreaks was introduced by the great outbreak of 1889-1890 and for the next quarter of a century flu a constant threat.

In April 918 flu broke among American troops stationed in France. It quickly spread through all the armies but caused relatively deaths. Four months later, , a second outbreak started which proved to be a