What is it about?

Tuberculosis (TB) is the infectious disease that kills more people than any other single germ. As part of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023, we estimated TB cases and deaths in 204 countries from 1990 to 2023, separating TB in people with and without HIV and drug-resistant (multidrug-resistant, MDR) TB. In 2023 there were about 9.1 million new TB cases and 1.2 million deaths. TB in people living with HIV caused around 210,000 deaths, and MDR-TB about 102,000. Since 2015, TB incidence fell by 19% and deaths by 23%, but progress was slower for MDR-TB and very uneven across regions, with sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia carrying the heaviest burden and little improvement in Latin America and the Caribbean. Eliminating smoking, alcohol use and high blood sugar would prevent over a third of TB deaths.

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Why is it important?

The world is far from the WHO End TB targets of a 90% fall in incidence and 95% fall in deaths by 2035. These estimates, produced just before recent cuts to global health funding, provide a baseline to monitor the impact of those cuts and show where efforts are most needed: HIV-related TB, drug-resistant TB and modifiable risk factors such as smoking, alcohol and diabetes. They give policymakers country-level evidence to protect hard-won progress.

Perspectives

Contributing to the Global Burden of Disease collaboration means being part of a worldwide effort to measure what really kills people. TB is preventable and curable, yet it still claims more than a million lives every year. I hope these numbers serve as a wake-up call at a time when funding for global health is under threat.

Professor Stefano Di Bella
Universita degli Studi di Trieste

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Global, regional, and national burden of tuberculosis and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis by HIV status, 1990–2023: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, July 2026, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/s1473-3099(26)00295-1.
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