U.S. Is Unprepared as Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Spreads Worldwide

Natalie Skipper started feeling under the weather a few weeks after returning home from volunteering at a South Africa hospital. "The worst flu I had ever had in my life," she said.

Her temperature hit 105 degrees. She had trouble walking.

She didn't have the flu.

Ms. Skipper, a 34-year-old physical therapist with a love of travel, was infected with tuberculosis. And not just any tuberculosis. She brought to Tennessee a strain that can't be cured with the most potent and common drugs used against the deadly disease. Multidrug-resistant TB is at epidemic proportions in some parts of the world—a growing problem the U.S. is surprisingly unprepared for.

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