Tuberculosis--time to accelerate progress.

摘要

Tuberculosis is a major and still neglected cause of death and disability in low-income and middle-income countries. Although the disease is treatable, and even preventable, it has limited political backing and little interest from the private sector. This neglect is partly because the greatest burden of disease is among those who are poor or economically and socially excluded. But also, until the early 1990s, there was a firm belief that tuberculosis had been conquered (at least in the economically developed world), and that the disease no longer justified priority status. The reality is quite different. In the past year alone there have been 2 million deaths from tuberculosis and 9 million new infections. There is more tuberculosis today than at any other time in history. The emergence of drug-resistant strains and the confluence with the HIV epidemic, as reviewed by Neel Gandhi and colleagues and Anthony Harries and colleagues in our Series today, has turned tuberculosis into a global public health crisis.