- Worldwide, tuberculosis (TB) kills 1.6 million people every year.
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Over two billion people– one third of the world’s total population– are infected with TB bacteria.
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TB is the biggest killer, worldwide, of women of reproductive age.
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Globally, TB is a disease of poverty, affecting mostly young adults in their most productive years.
TB and HIV:
- The fight against TB is closely tied with the fight against AIDS.
- TB is the number one killer of people living with HIV/AIDS.
- The deadly synergy between TB and HIV/AIDS has been highlighted by Nelson Mandela: “TB is too often a death sentence for people with AIDS,” Mandela said. “Today we are calling on the world to recognize that we can’t fight AIDS unless we do much more to fight TB as well.” Yet resources devoted to TB are a tiny fraction of those devoted to high-profile diseases such as AIDS and avian flu.
- Despite the deadly co-infection rates of TB and HIV/AIDS, the majority of those living with AIDS are not being screened for TB.
- About 200,000 people with HIV die from TB every year, most of them in Africa.
Drug-resistant TB:
- Without effective TB control we will not only see millions of unnecessary deaths from this completely curable killer, we will see a rise in drug-resistant TB.
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The recent identification of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), now found in 40 countries has demonstrated the consequences of neglecting TB.
- Increased funding for countries with high TB rates would boost health systems and prevent the development of more drug-resistant strains.
Learn More:
For more information on Tuberculosis, visit the following websites
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov/tb/
The Stop TB Partnership http://www.stoptb.org
World Care Council – Patients Charter http://www.worldcarecouncil.org/
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