Student (6th

In India today, two deaths occur every three minutes due to tuberculosis (TB) (www.timesofindia.com). It is spread through the air by a person suffering from TB. A single patient can infect 10 or more people in a year. Controlling TB in India is a tremendous challenge. The TB burden in India is still staggering. Every year, 1.8 million persons develop the disease, of which about 800,000 are infectious; and, until recently, 370,000 died of it annually —1,000 every day. The disease is a major barrier to social and economic development (www.tbcindia.nic.in). An estimated 100 million workdays are lost due to illness. Society and the country also incur a huge cost due to TB—nearly US $ 3 billion in indirect costs and US $ 300 million in direct costs (www.tbcindia.nic.in). It is seen that with appropriate antibiotic treatment, TB coul