Tuberculosis is preventable and curable, yet millions of people still develop the disease each year. Discover the global statistics and why diagnosis gaps, drug resistance, poverty and healthcare inequalities continue to drive TB deaths.
Tuberculosis has affected humans for thousands of years. From evidence in ancient Egyptian mummies to Robert Koch’s discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in 1882, BCG vaccination, antibiotics and modern genomics, the history of TB reflects some of the biggest advances in infectious-disease science. Yet in 2024, an estimated 10.7 million people developed tuberculosis and 1.23 million died from the disease.
Despite “free” treatment initiatives, global tuberculosis funding meets just 27% of international targets. This macro-level deficit trickles directly down to patients, where unavoidable non-medical expenses and lost wages trigger economic collapse for over half of affected households. Defeating tuberculosis requires looking beyond antibiotic delivery to fix a broken global and domestic financial architecture.
Learn about multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), including symptoms, causes, treatment, global statistics, WHO data, and why drug-resistant TB remains a major public health threat.
Every year, millions of people with tuberculosis are missing from official TB notifications. Explore who these missing TB patients are, why they remain undiagnosed or unreported, and what this means for global TB control.
