AS A schoolboy in Birmingham, Robin Wood was once given the task of opening and closing the high windows in his classroom using a long pole. Good ventilation was considered key to sound health and a sharp mind.Wood is now a leading scientist at the University of Cape Town, puzzling over why the city has such a raging tuberculosis (TB) epidemic. He spends much of his time hunting for clues on how the disease is spread, and how it has been in the past.Unlike European cities that exported TB to SA along with their colonial-era immigrants in the 19th century, Cape Town has never managed to get the disease under control. There were almost 30,000 newly notified cases of TB in 2009 among the city’s 3.4-million inhabitants, according to a study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. The incidence of TB in Cape Town was 479 per 100,000 of the population in 2014, according to the Western Cape health department.By contrast, the incidence in New York was just 7.7 cases per 100,000 in 201...
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