A Similar Pattern of Tuberculosis Mortality Decline in the United States and Thailand, before HIV

Andrew Noymer, University of California, Irvine
Amara Soonthorndhada, Mahidol University
Patama Vapattanawong, Mahidol University

We compare the decline of tuberculosis mortality in Thailand and in the USA. At present, Thailand is a high tuberculosis mortality country, and the United States has low mortality for this cause. However, adjusting the American data back by 39 years reveals a strikingly similar temporal pattern of tuberculosis mortality decline for the two countries. The choice of reference date for comparison is data-based. This suggests that the decline of infectious disease mortality is an auto-catalytic process that takes similar contours regardless of the socio-ecological setting. Nonetheless, it is quite surprising just how similar the mortality decline is for these two countries. To the extent to which there is divergence, it is due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Thailand, which has no analogue in the comparable point of tuberculosis mortality decline in the United States. This paper also considers the great gender differences in tuberculosis mortality decline in both countries.