Behold, a New World that has so little TB in it!

While helping a friend edit a paper on tuberculosis, I found this map over at Worldmapper. It vividly displays TB deaths by adjusting the size of a country to fix the number of deaths. One pattern that stands out is the absence of TB in the West. (Australia is in the "North", yet south of the Equator -- "Western", yet in the East. There is little TB in Australia). The disease is now nearly absent from the New World.

The prevalence of TB is positively a function of distance from the Equator and inversely a function of income. The level of TB in Australia is lower then we would expect. The level in Japan, higher. Given the low levels of income in Latin America, and its near proximity to the Equator, TB is less of a problem there then we would expect. Methods for treating TB practiced in Latin America should be copied in other parts of the Third World.