Tuberculosis (TB), a 40,000-year-old disease, still devastates communities although it has been preventable—and curable—for decades. In 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported 8.8 million TB cases—1.4 million of them fatal—worldwide. TB is the leading cause of death among people living with HIV; in 2010, it claimed 350,000 lives. TB continues to spread: each year, one-third of all cases—or 3 million people—go undiagnosed and untreated.
In 2010, there were 650,000 cases of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), which is difficult to cure; 9% were extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), which is often incurable What is the current strategy for TB, and why is it inadequate? The WHO’s Stop TB Strategy has been at the forefront of global TB control since its development in 2006. The Stop TB Strategy anchors its targets to those of the Millennium Development Goals, which include to…
