TB that resists antibiotic treatment is causing problems in India.

Over crowded living conditions, poor hygiene, ill-informed medical staff are and over use of antibiotics are fueling the already rampant problem.

The risk of drug resistant disease becoming pandemic is one of the Greatest concerns of the World Health Organization.

The problem of evolving TB drug resistance has been brewing for years. In the early 1990s, multidrug-resistant TB began spreading in New York City, abetted by homelessness, prison outbreaks and HIV. Aggressive identification and treatment of these cases, including the direct observation of patients taking their pills, snuffed out that epidemic.

In 2005, extensively drug-resistant TB — strains untreatable with the three first-line drugs and several second-choice medications — cropped up in the South African province of Kwazulu-Natal, again abetted by HIV, which devastates immune defenses.