Global Tuberculosis Report 2012

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major global health problem. It causes ill-health among millions of people each year and ranks as the second leading cause of death from an infectious disease worldwide, after the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The latest estimates included in this report are that there were almost 9 million new cases in 2011 and 1.4 million TB deaths (990,000 among HIV negative people and 430,000 HIV-associated TB deaths). This is despite the availability of treatment that will cure most cases of TB. Short-course regimens of first-line drugs that can cure around 90% of cases have been available since the 1980s.

This is the seventeenth global report on tuberculosis (TB) published by WHO in a series that started in 1997. It provides a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the TB epidemic and progress in implementing and financing TB prevention, care and control at global, regional and country levels using data reported by 204 countries and territories that account for over 99% of the world’s TB cases.