| Tuberculosis anywhere is everywhere |
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| TB is an infectious airborne disease that kills 1.6 million people every year. More than 90% of TB patients can be cured with a 6- to 8-month standardized course of antibiotic drugs that cost as little as $20. To ensure that TB patients take their drugs in the proper dosage and complete their full course, the WHO promotes directly observed treatment as the basis of its TB control strategy. This means patients are monitored by a health worker or volunteer when they take their medication. Doing so improves treatment outcomes, saves lives and prevents the development and spread of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) which is deadlier and more difficult and expensive to treat. Once a patient develops MDR TB, it can be transmitted to other people in the same way as normal tuberculosis. Recently even more virulent strains of extensively drug-resistant or XDR TB have been reported which do not respond to second-line TB drugs, our last line of defense against the disease. Greater investment is urgently needed in research and development for new TB drugs that will act effectively on MDR and XDR TB. |
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| Treatment strategy |
TB and AIDS |
Other aspects of the epidemic |
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