"Thanks to billions of dollars spent on diagnosis and treatment [of tuberculosis (TB)] over the past decade, deaths and infections are slowly declining," but "fake and poorly made antibiotics are being widely used to treat tuberculosis," according to a study "to be published [Tuesday] in the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease," Roger Bate, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and an author of the study, writes in a New York Times opinion piece. "These substandard drugs are almost certainly making the disease more resistant to drugs, posing a grave health threat to communities around the world," he continues, noting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new drug to treat drug-resistant TB. Bate summarizes the study's findings and notes "extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis called XDR-TB ... has now been identified in at least 77 countries -- including the United States."