66 - Tuberculosis infections

Summary

This category includes various forms of tuberculosis, and is a sub-category of All deaths due to infections (see Map 6).

Tuberculosis (TB) is transmitted by infectious droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes and occasionally by unpasteurised milk from infected cows. It is linked with poverty and living in overcrowded conditions. Many cases of TB in England and Wales are also linked with recent immigrant communities; this is less the case in Scotland. The map shows very high SMRs in Glasgow, London, Birmingham and the Greater Manchester area.

TB is an infection caused by mycobacteria. It most commonly attacks the lungs (known as respiratory or pulmonary tuberculosis) but can also affect other organs such as the central nervous system, the lymphatic system, the circulatory system, the bones, joints and even the skin. Symptoms include chest pain, a prolonged cough and coughing up blood.

Children who catch TB are often not ill with it and become resistant to it. Adults with HIV are at much greater risk of catching TB and much harder to treat.

TB is now usually curable with antibiotics which must be taken for at least six months. Before TB could be treated in this way, in the early twentieth century, people who had the infection were commonly sent to sanatoria for many months and sometimes years, where they were treated with a regime of fresh air and rest. Some strains resistant to all antibiotics are now occurring.

TB is a disease that has a particular association with literature and the Romantic period, with poet John Keats (1795–1821) being the most notorious literary victim of TB and the epitome of the young, beautiful, doomed poet.