Tuberculosis in AfricaThe unprecedented growth of the tuberculosis epidemicin Africa is attributable to several factors, the most importantbeing the HIV epidemic. Although HIV is Africa’s leadingcause of death, tuberculosis is the most common coexistingcondition in people who die from AIDS. Autopsy stud-ies have shown that 30 to 40% of HIV-infected adults diefrom TB. Among HIV-infected children, TB accounts forup to one in five of all deaths. 70% of adults and 88% ofchildren—infected with HIV worldwide live in sub-SaharanAfrica (Fig. 3), but almost all of the treatment developedto date has been designed using the research into the NorthAmerican and European M. tuberculosis strains. Analysisof molecular-based data have shown diverse genetic back-grounds among both drug-sensitive and MDR TB isolates inAfrica presumably due to underlying genetic and environ-mental differences