Antituberculosis Chemotherapy

Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the major infectious diseases of mankind although drugs for its treatment have been available for nearly 60 years. The standard short-course 6-month regimen used since about 1980 has helped to save millions of lives, but co-infection with HIV has had a devastating effect on the epidemic, and multidrug-resistant TB is a growing problem, particularly in communities with a high incidence of HIV. Following the declaration by the WHO in the early 1990s that TB was a ‘