Dive Brief:
- A new report by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows, for the first time, tuberculosis (TB) rivals HIV/AIDS as the leading cause of death from infectious diseases. In 2014, 1.1 million people died of TB and 1.2 million of HIV/AIDS globally, with 400,000 infected with both diseases.
- The report included data from 205 countries and of the estimated 480,000 cases of multi-drug resistant TB in 2014, only one in four was diagnosed. In addition, six million new cases of TB were reported to the WHO last year, fewer than 66% of the 9.6 million worldwide estimated to have contracted the disease.
- The report "should serve as a wake-up call that enormous work still needs to be done to reduce the burden of this ancient, yet curable disease," Dr. Grania Brigden, interim medical director of Doctors Without Borders, told Reuters.
Dive Insight:
Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO TB program, said the report shows the dramatic gains in access to HIV/AIDS treatment, but also reflects funding disparities for the two diseases. "The good news is that TB intervention has saved some 43 million lives since 2000," but the death rate remained "unacceptably high," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.
International funding for HIV/AIDS is 10 times higher than for TB, with $8 million spent on HIV/AIDS interventions versus a total of $800,000 spent on TB. Some of the disparity is because HIV/AIDS affects the more resource-poor countries in Africa, but TB remains prevalent in countries like India and China, which are more able to finance domestic efforts to address TB infections.
However, there remains a $1.4 billion gap in funding for TB interventions this year.