The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that cases of tuberculosis (TB) are decreasing worldwide. The drug used to eradicate the virus is successful but more funds are needed to bring the drug to impoverished countries. For travelers, this should be fantastic news even if they have their international medical insurance to protect them. TB is contagious and the international travel health insurance will not be able to stop a person from getting infected unless he has taken the preventive drug.

WHO announced also that 8.8 million people got sick with TB last year, 2010. This is lower than the 2005 figure of 9 million cases. But guess what? At the same time that WHO was having its press conference; researchers were revealing in a study published by the British Medical Journal that TB can be caused by too much smoking. And these researchers reveal that is smoking is not controlled and allowed to grow at its current rate, there will be at least 18 million new cases of TB!

Translated, this means smokers are at risk for TB and the expected deaths from TB by 2050 computed at the current number of smokers in the world will reach 40 million. They say that according to WHO statistics, about 20% of the world’s population smokes tobacco, and the numbers are rising especially in poorer countries. These are the very same countries that cannot afford the drugs to treat TB. On a more frightening scenario based on the most pessimistic analysis, it is possible for the world to experience more than 34 million cases and over 114 million deaths from TB caused by smoking. The link between smoking and TB is that smokers have weaker lungs and cannot fight off the infection well.

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