The BCG vaccines will celebrate the 100th anniversary of their discovery in a decade at the beginning of the next century since Albert Calmette and Camille Guebrin had presented it before the Academie des Sciences in 1908. At present tuberculosis kills more people than any other infectious disease about 3 million people a year, including almost 300,000 children under 15, and is producing over 7,000 deaths and over 24,000 new cases every day. Therefore, WHO declared a global health emergency in

more »

... 993. More worse, recently multi-drug resistant tubercle bacilli are emerging rapidly making TB patients incurable. Under these situations we need a potent anti-tuberculosis vaccine. So first of all, we must check the century-old BCG before proceeding further. At moment, the BCG vaccines are being used worldwide in the largest quantities in the world, but still most controvercial vaccines anywhere. I would like to describe here their success and failure in the combat against the white plague.