Professor Salome Charalambous

And some of it is because of some of these characteristics.

So unfortunately, TB is most prevalent in the poorest countries of the world.

And we know that of the 30 highest burden countries in the world, 67% of TB occurs in 30 countries.

And sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia are really the parts of the world where TB is most common.

So people who are poor and live in lower socioeconomic groups have a higher risk for TB, but there are other reasons that a person can also get TB.

One of them is having also something that affects your immune system, like HIV, like human immunodeficiency virus, or even other diseases that affect the immune system, like if you're on cancer treatment, for instance, you're at higher risk for TB.

Also TB occurs very commonly in congregate settings, what we call congregate settings.

So people who live close together.

So for instance, that's why mines were particularly a place where people got TB, but also other congregate settings like army barracks, prisons.

And interestingly enough, TB is actually more common in men than in women.

So the typical congregate settings are the ones where they are mainly men.

So those are some of the high risk factors for TB.

But anybody can get TB.

It doesn't have boundaries.

So yes, it is more common in people who are poorer, but anybody can actually get TB.

And it's also a really big problem amongst healthcare workers because we're exposed to TB when we're working with people and we have high risk for TB as well.

So that's a very interesting question because the diagnosis of TB is quite difficult.

So again, up until about...

10 years ago, the way that we diagnosed TB was the same as in the 1950s.

So we were using a microscope and diagnosing TB on sputum under a microscope.