Tuberculosis

Living and Dying with TB in Kolkata, India. This six-year-old is a sputum positive TB patient. - © LHIL/Kaushik Sengupta/Drik

Despite recent progress, Tuberculosis (TB) remains an important global public health problem. One-third of the world’s population is currently infected with the tubercle bacillus, nearly 9 million new cases occur each year and more than one and a half million deaths are due to Tuberculosis (TB).

Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a particularly dangerous form of drug-resistant TB, potentially incurable in many settings. MDR-TB is defined as disease caused by TB bacilli resistant to at least isoniazid and rifampicin, the two most powerful anti-TB drugs.

Rates of MDR-TB are high in some countries and, coupled with the devastating effects of TB-HIV co-infection, threaten to undermine TB control efforts worldwide.