Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading infectious disease killer and one of the most common causes of death among people living with HIV. In 2022, 10.6 million people fell ill with TB and approximately 1.3 million people died from the disease, including people living with HIV. Colliding crises – climate change, war and deepening inequities within and between countries – are causing more people to suffer and die from TB, a preventable, treatable and curable disease.

But we are fighting back. Thanks to interventions by the Global Fund partnership, TB programs are showing strong signs of recovery. We must continue to scale up adaptation and mitigation efforts to maintain these fragile gains against TB, and increase investments in the same tools, health workers and systems for health that are needed to fight TB and COVID-19 and to prepare for future airborne pandemics.

The first step to ending TB is to screen, test and treat everyone falling ill with the disease. One person with active, untreated TB can spread the disease to as many as 15-20 other people in a year.

In 2023, TB programs supported by the Global Fund recorded a complete recovery from COVID-19-related disruption. More people with TB were found and treated than ever before. The significant recovery and acceleration in screening and testing from 2022 continued, and efforts to find undiagnosed people have progressed in many countries.

The Global Fund is working with the Stop TB Partnership and WHO to find “missing” people with TB – people who go undetected, untreated, or unreported – including those with drug-resistant TB.

Drug-resistant TB is part of the growing challenge of antimicrobial-resistant superbugs that do not respond to existing medications. The Global Fund is working with our partners to support the introduction of new drugs that provide better and faster treatment of drug-resistant TB, and the uptake of new, shorter TB preventive therapies.

In 2022, the percentage of people treated for TB in the countries where the Global Fund invests rose to 70%, with those treated for drug-resistant TB rising to 33%. We are also investing in rapid molecular diagnostics for both drug-sensitive and drug-resistant TB to support the latest guidance from WHO.

Preventing the spread of infection and the progression from infection to active disease is fundamental to winning the fight against TB. The Global Fund continues to invest in broadening access to better preventive treatment in low- and middle-income countries. In countries where the Global Fund invests, 2 million people exposed to TB received preventive therapy in 2023.

HIV and TB are a deadly combination, as each fuels the progress of the other in infected patients. Every person living with HIV should be screened and monitored for TB, and every person diagnosed with TB also needs to be tested for HIV. In 2023, 353,000 TB patients living with HIV were on antiretroviral therapy during TB treatment. Coverage of antiretroviral drugs in TB patients living with HIV increased from 45% in 2010 to in 91% in 2022.