Worldwide TB cases decline - WHO 2011 TB Report

The World Health Organization recently released the 2011 Global Tuberculosis Control Report, providing encouraging results – the number of people who fell ill with TB dropped to 8.8 million in 2010 while the death toll reached its lowest level in a decade.

Report highlights

• The world and all of WHO’s six regions are on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal target that TB incidence rates should be falling by 2015;
• 8.8 million - number of people who fell ill with TB in 2010
  • 1.1 million cases among people with HIV. The number has been falling since 2005
• India and China accounted for 40% of the world’s notified cases of TB in 2010, Africa for a further 24%

Declining incidence

• The absolute number of TB cases has been falling since 2006
• TB incidence rates have been falling since 2002
• Among the 22 highest TB burden countries, Brazil and China show a sustained decline in TB burden over the past 20 years.
  • China, in particular, has made dramatic progress through domestic investment and international collaboration on TB. Between 1990 and 2010, the TB death rate fell by almost 80%, with deaths falling from 216,000 to 55,000, and the TB prevalence rate was halved.

Multidrug-resistant TB

• In 2010, there was an estimated prevalence of 650,000 cases of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), and in 2008 it was estimated there were 150,000 MDR-TB deaths annually.

Tuberculosis (TB) is contagious and airborne. It is a disease of poverty affecting mostly young adults in their most productive years. 95% of TB deaths are in the developing world.

Source - WHO report:  Global Tuberculosis Control 2011