Question: How many people have you found with tuberculosis in your life

Emma Roycroft answered on 8 Nov 2016:

Hi Bellabear, you might be surprised to hear that there are around 500 new cases of TB every single year in Ireland! There is also another scary thing called ‘latent TB’. This is where healthy people are infected with TB, but they’re immune systems build a wall around the TB and the person does not get sick immediately. Any time in their lives that their immune system is lowered for any reason (if they get sick with something else, or need a transplant, or have chemotherapy), their TB might break down the wall and come out again. They estimate that ~10% of the Irish population is infected with latent TB and any of them could re-activate at any time. So it is a very clever organism, and difficult to eradicate. We are lucky in Ireland though, other poorer countries, like India and parts of Africa, that have huge numbers of TB every year. Would you be interested in a career in science?