One week ahead of the first UN High-Level Meeting on TB, the World Health Organization today released the new edition of its Global TB Report.
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While the report highlighted key areas of progress, data for 2017 also demonstrates the scale of the challenge ahead as countries set to work implementing the political declaration of the forthcoming UN High-Level Meeting.
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While in 2017, for example, TB programmes were able to diagnose and treat an additional 100,000 people with TB compared with 2016, the same programmes will need to diagnose and treat a further 500,000 additional people in 2018 in order to keep pace with the commitments to be made in New York.
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Perhaps most importantly, TB continues to be the world’s deadliest infectious disease, with 10 million people falling ill and 1.6 million people dying needlessly last year. Meanwhile, 1-in-3 people with TB go formally undiagnosed and untreated, while for drug-resistant TB this remains a staggering 71%.
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To read the report in full, click here.
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