Although 150 years have elapsed since the discovery of the tubercle bacillus by Robert koch, tuberculosis remains globally a serious and important infectious disease. With the AIDS scourge the disease has gained prominence among the infectious diseases and projections are that large number of cases of tuberculosis will be attributable to HIV infection. Therefore keeping in mind the needs of a developing country, a simple and an inexpensive diagnostic test is required to pick up infected cases so that an early therapy could be initiated. Unfortunately all currently available tests for...