More people die of tuberculosis (結核病) than of any

other disease caused by a single agent. This has probably

been the case in quite a while. During the early stages of ___1____

the industrial revolution, perhaps one in every seventh ___2___

deaths in Europe’s crowded cities were caused by the ___3___

disease. From now on, though, western eyes, missing the __4____

global picture, saw the trouble going into decline. With

occasional breaks for war, the rates of death and

infection in the Europe and America dropped steadily __5___

through the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 1950s, the

introduction of antibiotics (抗菌素) strengthened the

trend in rich countries, and the antibiotics were allowed

to be imported to poor countries. Medical researchers ___6__

declared victory and withdrew.

They are wrong. In the mid-1980s the frequency of __7___

infections and deaths started to pick up again around the

world. Where tuberculosis vanished, it came back; in ___8___

many places where it had never been away, it grew better. ___9___

The World Health Organization estimates that 1.7

billion people (a third of the earth’s population) suffer

from tuberculosis. Even the infection rate was

falling, population growth kept the number of clinical

cases more or less constantly at 8 million a year. Around ____10___

3 million of those people died, nearly all of them in poor

countries。

　　
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