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For longer than human history has been written, tuberculosis has been a widespread killer. With the telltale sign of coughed up blood, having tuberculosis was life-changing—especially when people had no idea what caused it. When it was eventually discovered to be caused by bacteria in 1882, scientists could finally start figuring out how to treat and prevent it.
In the same year, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in America. Leading up to this, the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis were blamed on East Asians (specifically the Chinese in San Francisco's Chinatown). During this time, Asians had a higher rate of tuberculosis than other racial demographics. If this has been true since the late 1800s (and even possibly before), what factors are enduring to make this still true now in the 21st century?
1600-1851 - 25% of the population in Europe and America is killed by TB.
1700s - TB was coined "The White Plague" due to the paleness of infected patients.
1834 - The name "tuberculosis" was coined by Johann Scholein, a German naturalist.
1882 - Robert Koch, a German physicist and microbiologist, concluded that TB is caused by an organism (bacteria).
1914-Public health officials used public events such as parades on Disease Prevention Day to encourage good hygiene.
1920 - Human trials for the Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine begin, a vaccine used for preventing TB that is administered soon after birth.
1924 - Books, such as this one which was published in Chicago, were mass printed across the U.S. to prevent the spread of TB. Propaganda was used into scaring the public to be more cautious about the disease.
1944 - Streptomycin is found to successfully treat TB.
1953 - The CDC publishes TB data on the United States as a whole for the first time, reporting 84,304 cases of TB in the country.
1968 - TB treatment was decreased to spanning only 9 months after the widespread introduction of Rifampin.
1970 - The first outbreak of drug-resistant TB was found in the United States (New York City), a stark reminder that incomplete treatment of TB can have devastating consequences.
1985 - TB cases started to drastically increase again because of the emergence of HIV/AIDS epidemic.
2020 - The CDC reports that there were 7,174 TB cases per 100,000 people in the United States, a drop of 19.4% annually. However, the data only reports active TB and not latent TB, so the data is not 100% accurate.
2022 - On October 27, the U.S. Aid for International Development (USAID) released their plan to achieve a TB free world by 2030. This aid plans to scale up treatment, detection, and care of patients with TB between 2023 and 2030 in addition to the $4.2 million dollars of aid the organization has already provided to date.
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