Statistics Tell The Tale of TB

What’s New in Tuberculosis

By Sandy K. Johnson

Tuberculosis is a disease that is curable in about 95 percent of cases. It is essentially eradicated in the United States and other first-world nations. Yet TB still infects 9.6 million people worldwide every year and kills 1.5 million.

The statistics tell the story, as related by Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of global TB for the World Health Organization.

Half of all new TB cases, per capita, occur in these nations: 23 percent in India, 10 percent in Indonesia, 10 percent in China, 5 percent in Nigeria and 5 percent in Pakistan.

Half a million women and 140,000 children died of TB in 2014, creating 10 million TB “orphans.”

The worst form of the disease, MDR-TB, is “out of control” in India, China, Russia, Pakistan and Ukraine, which host 62 percent of all drug-resistant TB cases.

Raviglione noted the global goal of eliminating TB by 2035. Local and international sources of funding are running $1.4 billion short of the $8 billion goal. “If you came from the moon, you’d say this makes no sense, there is something wrong,” he told international journalists at a National Press Foundation training program in Cape Town, South Africa.

Dr. Aamir Javed Khan, executive director of the Interactive Research and Development, had a slightly more critical take. Khan said the TB community has not been an effective advocate for the disease.

“When we say there is not enough money in TB, it’s because we have been very ineffective in running global TB programs,” Khan said, noting that donors had been giving money to the same groups for decades without effective results.

“It’s not working. In the HIV community that would never happen. There needs to be a lot more shaming.”

This program is funded by Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Lilly MDR-TB Project and TB Alliance. NPF is solely responsible for the content.

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