A conference has opened in the Thai capital, Bangkok, to raise awareness of the threat of global catastrophe from the spread of tuberculosis.

Experts from the World Health Organisation said poor management of national health programmes and the spread of AIDS had already caused a tuberculosis epidemic in India and many other parts of Asia, which travellers could spread all over the world.

A BBC Correspondent in Bangkok says the doctors' greatest fear is that in the current recession, Asian governments will cut their health budgets.

This, they believe, would increase the spread of a strain of tuberculosis resistant to all the normal and relatively cheap forms of treatment.