"Events during the past decade have dramatically In the West, we can no longer say that we are a for­ changed the nature and magnitude of the problem of tress, safe from these problems. The time to say that tuberculosis. Much of what many physicians learned we are safe is long past. Our own success has led to in training about this disease is no longer true. In many the development of a society with relatively high respects tuberculosis has become a new entity" [1]. numbers of older people who are susceptible to tuber­ The return of tuberculosis as a major infectious culosis and to the development of an under-class who disease in Western industrialised countries has taken are particularly exposed to the disease. It has also doctors by surprise and found them unprepared to made us attractive to many economic refugees, who fight it. Globalisation is a word that is constantly ap­ will cross the borders in the near future. Not only has plied by governments, economists and financial gurus tuberculosis changed but, during the past 20 years, to the transfer of money and information around the the methods of investigation available to the radio­ world; however, it does not only apply to politics but logist and the physician have developed. also to the transfer of populations and of disease.