A MONTH or two ago about 75 people gathered in the Lord Chancellor’s apartments in the House of Lords to hear Ian McCartney MP, the chairman of the Labour Party, talk about his experiences when he suffered from TB. He  was introducing the campaign of the World Health Organisation (WHO) whose aim is to limit the present worldwide epidemic of TB. Although the problems faced by doctors in the UK are relatively minor, compared to those which  confront the medical services in the Third World, the number of patients with tuberculosis is showing a resurgence.  The incidence more than tripled in the late 1980’s and early 1990s. There was a 10 per cent increase in the cases  recorded in London in 2000, but there has been some plateauing out of the graph from abroad. Many in the UK who have TB have come from overseas. TB affects 100 in 100,000 of those coming from India, 200 per 100,000 in those arriving from Africa. It is also common in people immigrating from Eastern Europe and as a result TB has doubled in incidence in Camden, Hackney and Greenwich and other London inner city boroughs.