Integrative Approaches to Treat Tuberculosis

A person's health involves every aspect of his or her life, including physical, mental, emotional, behavioural, and social state. Therefore, in a more precise context, an integrative approach to treatment draws a connection between biomedical sciences and psychological-social sciences. An epidemiologically noticeable disease called Tuberculosis is predominantly caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis . Physiologically, it is a respiratory tract infection, transmitted depending upon the contact and intimacy level with the patients; the risk of occurrence and transmission of this infectious disease is considered to be high in low socioeconomic populations of certain ethnicity and age group. Lack of education, unemployment, overcrowding, migration, drug abuse and alcoholism, co-morbidities with HIV, silicosis, rheumatoid arthritis or diabetes, etc., must be taken into account as several influencers or risk factors of the disease. Therefore, along with the employment of technologically developed treatment procedures, the need of educational strategies must be considered to treat tuberculosis. Recently, the World Health Organization has proficiently aimed at the elimination of the socioeconomic factors along with the achievement of environmental sustainability against the barriers created by the disease of tuberculosis. This chapter focuses on major causes and diagnosis techniques of tuberculosis, attributes of the disease transmission, historical and evolutionary analysis of TB cases all over the world, study of various determinants affecting health condition combining with its progression and integrative approaches to prevent and treat tuberculosis. It will cover recent advancements and future facets regarding the holistic growth of treatment techniques; they will act as solutions towards the interdisciplinary challenges of tuberculosis.