Health and disease → Infectious disease
Also filed under Diseases of poverty.
A curable bacterial infection that remains one of the world's deadliest, concentrated overwhelmingly among the poor. Treatment exists, works, and costs little; the gap is finding cases and finishing courses, not inventing a cure.
What would have to be true
| Milestone | Baseline | Latest | Target | By | Progress | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cut tuberculosis deaths by 90 per cent against 2015 annual deaths | 1,800,000 deaths | 1,250,000 deaths | 180,000 deaths | 2030 | 34% | offtrack |
Progress is the distance travelled from baseline to target, not the share of the target reached. A milestone that began near its goal has not made 90 per cent of the progress.
What works, and what you can do
Give to organisations that screen for tuberculosis where people live rather than waiting for them to reach a clinic.
Finding cases earlier shortens the window in which one person infects others, which is where most of the value is. trial
Effort one decision · Cost any amount
Contribute to open source used by national programmes to track whether patients finish a six-month course.
Incomplete courses are the main driver of drug resistance, which turns a cheap curable disease into an expensive one. observational
Effort a few hours a week · Cost none
What is unsettled
Programmes report treatment success rates on people they have found. The people they have not found are counted by modelling, not observation, and the two numbers are often quoted together.
What would settle it Prevalence surveys in the highest-burden countries, compared against notification data for the same year.