Tuberculosis at the beginning of the third millennium: one disease, three epidemics

Despite the fact that major progress has been made in the development of new strategies for diagnosing and treating tuberculosis, the disease still remains a huge challenge for the world's health care. Numerous causes are responsible for this threat, but many of them cannot be resolved since a lot have cultural and social roots which cannot be changed easily. Furthermore, not all countries in the world have enough financial resources to provide essential support for their educational and therapeutic programs. One of the major challenges for tuberculosis is to deal with the growing and changing epidemic around the world, especially in the "low-income" countries. A new generation of clinicians as well as radiologists should be prepared to consider this "almost forgotten" disease as a new challenge at the beginning of this new millennium.