Continuing our World TB Day series, the following is a guest blog post by Ernesto Jaramillo, Paul Nunn and Mario Raviglione of the Stop TB Department at the World Health Organization (WHO) discussing WHO’s new report issued today: Towards universal access to diagnosis and treatment of multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis by 2015 – WHO progress report 2011.

“Major progress has been made in TB control over the past 15 years, with 41 million people cured and up to 6 million deaths averted thanks to the wide implementation of proper TB control practices since 1995. The global TB incidence rate peaked in 2004 and has since started a slow decline. However, despite these achievements, TB is far from being conquered globally, with 1.7 million people dying of this curable disease every year. In addition, the emergence of multidrug-resistant TB and extensively drug-resistant TB in many countries worldwide is a serious threat to the progress achieved…”

As part of our series honoring World TB Day, the following is a commentary by Carol Dukes Hamilton, MD, senior scientist of Health and Developmental Sciences at FHI and associate professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center.

“Today is the day that we acknowledge the progress and the ongoing challenges associated with the second leading infectious disease killer in the world today—tuberculosis (TB). This ancient disease continues to take a tremendous human toll of 1.8 million lives annually. Without dramatic increases in funding and political commitment, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 10 million additional lives will be lost between now and 2015 to this preventable, curable disease – 4 million of them will be women and children…”