CHAPTER ONE1.0 INTRODUCTIONTuberculosis is a disease caused by Bacteria called mycobacteriumtuberculosis, the bacteria usually attacked the lung, but Tuberculosis bacteriacan attack any part of body such as kidney, spine, and brain. If not treatedproperly, tuberculosis can be fatal, tuberculosis was once leading cause of deathin the united state, and TB is spread through air from one person to another, thebacteria are put into air when a person with tuberculosis disease of lungs orthroat coughs, sneezes, speaks or sings people nearby may breath in thesebacteria and become infected (Barnes F.P and Wizel B., 2000)Tuberculosis is second only to HIV/AIDS as the greatest killer worldwidedue to a single infection agent, in 2011, 8.7 million people fell ill withtuberculosis and 1.4 million died from it, over 95% of TB death occur in lowand middle income countries and it is among the top three causes of death forwomen aged 15-44, in 2010, there were about 10 million orphan children as aresult of TB deaths among parents.The estimated number of people falling ill with tuberculosis each year isdeclining, although very slowly, which means that the world is on track toachieve the Millennium Development Goal to the tuberculosis patients.A retrospective study is aimed at pertaining the prevalence of pulmonarytuberculosis among patient attending infectious Disease hospital, Kano wasconducted between January, 2006 -July, 2008, sputum samples were obtainedfrom three thousand six hundred and seventy nine (3679) patients, sample weresmeared on the glass slides, stained using Zieh neelson stain and later observedunder light (oil immersion) microscopy, the results showed that were positivefor tuberculosis had the prevalence of 541(14.7%) out of 3679 subjected , theage group 30-43 years had the highest prevalence of 145(17.0%) 0ut of 858 of1 PTB positive subjected, there was significant difference between age groupsand sex of subjects with PTB positivity (x2;11.07 at p=0.05 and x2=15.09 atp=0.01); similarly the difference between the prevalence of TB in male andfemale subjects between the three years period (x2=14.07 at p=0.05 andx2=18.48 at p=0.01) was significant different, it is worthy that PTB is still aserious diseases in this part of the world, thus there is need for stopping TB byawareness treatment and control program (Barnes, F.P and Wizel,B., 2000).
