About 1.7 billion people, that’s 23% of the world’s population, are estimated to have a latent TB infection, and are thus at risk of developing active TB disease during their lifetime.
This is according to the latest report by the World Health Organization on the disease.
Worldwide, TB is still one of the top 10 causes of death and the leading cause from a single infectious agent (currently above HIV/AIDS).
Millions of people continue to fall sick with TB each year.
Globally, it is estimated that 10 million people developed the disease in 2017: 5.8 million men, 3.2 million women and a million children.
There were cases in all countries and age groups, but overall 90% were adults (aged above15 years), 9% were people living with HIV (72% of which were in Africa).
Two thirds of the cases were in eight countries: India, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and South Africa. These and 22 other countries on WHO’s list of 30 high TB burden countries accounted for 87% of the world’s cases.
Only 6% of global cases were in Europe and the Americas. The severity of national epidemics varies widely among countries. In 2017, there were fewer than 10 new cases per 100 000 population in most high-income countries, 150–400 in most of the 30 high TB burden countries, and above 500 in a few countries including Mozambique, the Philippines and South Africa.
Drug-resistant TB
The best estimate is that, worldwide in 2017, 558 000 people developed TB that was resistant to rifampicin (RR-TB), the most effective firstline drug, and of these, 82% had multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB). Three countries accounted for almost half of the world’s cases of MDR/RR-TB: India, China and Russia.
