-- The global Stop TB Partnership, a leading advocacy and research group based in Geneva.

-- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's TB Education and Training Resources Website.

-- A blog and news center for international WORLD TB DAY (March 24 every year). Learn what you can do!

-- The New England TB Consortium, the regional TB resource center.

-- The National Tuberculosis Controllers Association and the National Tuberculosis Nurse Coalition.

-- U.S. TB statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

-- A TB fact sheet from the CDC.

-- The World Health Organization 2007 Report, Global Tuberculosis Control: Surveillance, Planning, Financing.

-- Ending TB in the Americas: Your 2009 Resource, sponsored by the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations.

>>>> Caused by the Mycobacterium Tuberculosis germ, TB typically infects the lungs, but it can infect almost any part of the body, including the liver, the bones and the brain. It can linger undetected in a person for decades before symptoms appear. TB spreads through the air –– via coughing, sneezing or talking.

>>>> TB is ancient. Some Egyptian mummies show evidence of the disease.

>>>> Over the ages, TB has been called by many names, including "phthisis," "king’s evil," "scrofula," "consumption," and "the white plague," a 1900s term.

>>>> Until modern times, TB defied treatment –– but not for lack of trying. Among the many remedies was this from Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder: "The cure is effected by taking a wolf’s liver boiled in thin wine; the bacon of a sow which has been fed upon herbs; or the flesh of a she-ass, eaten with the broth."

>>>> Many famous people suffered from TB, including Chopin, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Mozart, Orwell, Keats, President Andrew Jackson, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Thomas Wolfe, who died in 1938 of tuberculosis of the brain.

>>>> It is estimated that TB has killed more than a billion people since the year 1700. Today, one person is infected with TB every second (not all develop active cases).

>>>> Historically, TB killed millions of Americans, but effective treatment has lessened the toll. In 2007, latest year for which data are available, 13,299 Americans had TB, and fewer than 700 died of it, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of the new cases were among immigrants.

>>>> Globally, TB today is the second-biggest killer by infectious disease, after HIV/AIDS. According to the World Health Organization, one person is infected with TB every second; a third of the world’s population carries the disease. Globally, 1.7 million people died of TB in 2006, latest year for which data are available, and more than 9 million new cases, mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia (where many victims also suffer from AIDS), were diagnosed.

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