The Global Tuberculosis Epidemic: Scale, Dynamics, and Prospects for Control

I. Introduction Drugs that can cure most tuberculosis (TB) patients have been available since the 1950s, yet TB remains the world’s most important cause of death from an infectious agent, besides the human immunodefficiency virus (HIV) with which it is intimately linked (1). TB control is high on the international public health agenda, not just because of the enormous burden of the disease, but also because short-course chemotherapy is recognized to be among the most cost-effective of all health interventions (2, 3). The evidence from studies of the burden on health and cost-effectiveness have been central to promotion of the World Health Organization’s DOTS strategy, and the enhanced Stop TB Strategy, which combine best practices in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with active TB (4-6).