The story of TB is told in numbers. The deadliest pandemic in human history, TB continues to kill 1.3 million people a year. More than 2 billion people carry the TB bacteria through latent TB infection. Individual treatment costs run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds, drug regimens are measured in months and years, the number of pills in the thousands. The funding shortfalls run into the billions.
At the heart of each of those statistics is an individual: a patient, a husband, a wife, a daughter, a son, someone who has had their life irrevocably changed by TB. Under the flood of numbers and figures, all too often, their tales of treatment and suffering are drowned out.
This report casts a light on those daily battles and highlight that TB is not a disease of a bygone era but a real and present public health threat right here in the UK.