Tuberculosis is among the fatal diseases that are spread through the air. It’s contagious, meaning that it spreads from one infected individual to another, and at times it spreads very fast. In addition to being contagious, the disease is an opportunist infection as it takes advantage of those with weak defense mechanism, and especially the ones with terminal diseases like HIV and AIDS. Tuberculosis is therefore among the major concerns for the World Health Organization due to its contagious nature (World Health Organization 1).
Although Africa and other developing nations lead in the number of those infected with tuberculosis, the infected population in the world is currently estimated to be at around one third of the entire population, showing that the disease is quite common in nearly all parts of the world. The disease is also common in the developed nations. Approximately 7 percent of those affected by TB, including those who are HIV positive, develop tuberculosis infections as a result of TB bacilli, which is the bacterium that causes the disease