Acid-fast wall
A waxy coat makes the bacillus hardy and slow, and explains some staining tricks in labs.
Identity is a slow acid-fast rod that prefers lungs but can travel in the body, and a social disease of crowded indoor air.
Korea's historic burden among rich countries is a reminder that TB is not only a 19th-century novel.
Traits
Airborne
Tiny nuclei from coughs can hang in a room. Time and ventilation matter more than a handshake.
Granuloma
Immune cells wall off bacilli. That truce is latency when it holds.
Reactivation risk
Aging, HIV, drugs that suppress immunity and malnutrition can break the truce.
Programme disease
Case finding, isolation of infectious patients and completing therapy are civic tools.
Partial BCG
A century-old vaccine still used in many high-burden countries for infants.
A webpage cannot tell a reader whether their cough is TB.
Keep exploring
More in Encounters
Influenza
A winter respiratory virus of drift and rare shift — surveillance and vaccines, not a cartoon villain.
Familiarity 93Escherichia coli
Usually a gut resident; a minority of STEC pathotypes drive foodborne headlines.
Familiarity 82Staphylococcus aureus
A common skin neighbor and a resistance story called MRSA — not scare porn.
Familiarity 78Norovirus
A very-low-dose gut virus of schools and ships — soap and bleach surfaces, not alcohol-gel faith.
Familiarity 80Helicobacter pylori
A gastric spiral that rewrote the ulcer textbook — Nobel 2005, Korea's high historic prevalence, no recipes.
Familiarity 68