TB Facts

• This year more people will die of TB than in any other year in history.
• TB kills more youth and adults than any other infectious disease.
• This year, two or three million people will die of TB. Almost all TB deaths are preventable.
• Someone dies of TB every 10 seconds.
• Someone gets sick from TB every 4 seconds.
• One percent of the world's population is infected with TB each year.
• One-third of the world's population is infected with the TB bacillus.
• Left untreated, a person with active TB can infect between 10 and 15 people in one year.
• Like the common cold, TB spreads through the air when infectious people cough, spit, talk or sneeze.
• TB usually kills a person by gradually eating holes in the lungs.

• TB is the single biggest infectious killer of women.
• Over 900 million women are infected with TB world-wide, one million will die and 2.5 million will get sick this year from the disease---mainly between the ages of 15 and 44.
• TB is the single biggest killer of young women.
• TB accounts for 9 percent of deaths among women between the ages 15 and 44, compared with war, which accounts for 4 percent, HIV 3 percent and heart disease 3 percent
• Women of reproductive age are more susceptible to sickness once infected with TB than men of the same age.
• Women in this age group are also at greater risk from HIV infection.
• In parts of Africa, young women with TB outnumber young men with TB.
• TB kills more women than any cause of maternal mortality.
• In some parts of the world, the stigma attached to TB leads to isolation abandonment and divorce of women.
• In some parts of the world, women's movements are leading the efforts to control TB.

• HIV and TB are a deadly duo: each speeding up the progress of the other.
• TB is the leading cause of death among people who are HIV-positive.
• One-third of the increase in the incidence of TB in last five years can be attributed to HIV.
• HIV is currently the single most potent factor to cause sickness to break out in someone infected with TB.
• Someone who is HIV-positive and infected with TB is 30 times more likely to become sick with TB than someone who is HIV-negative.
• WHO estimates that by the end of the century HIV infection will annually cause at least 1.4 million active cases of TB that otherwise would not have occurred.
• Of the 31 million people world-wide who were HIV-positive in 1997, around one-third were believed to be infected with TB.
• TB accounts for almost one-third of AIDS deaths world-wide.
• TB accounts for 40 percent of AIDS deaths in Africa and Asia.
• Up to two-thirds of those infected with HIV in India may become sick with TB.

• 80 percent of victims are between 15 and 49---the most economically productive years of their lives.
• TB carries a direct cost to the health service (diagnosis, treatment, and control), patients and their family (drugs, transportation).
• Direct costs to private patients in India are US $100-$150 per patient cured---more than half the annual income of a daily wage earner.
• TB carries an indirect cost to society, the family and the community.
• A survey in Thailand estimated the indirect cost of TB to be the equivalent of two months income for every patient cured.
• A patient who is never diagnosed or treated loses on average a full year of work.
• The world's governments need to spend an additional US $500 million to achieve 70 percent DOTS coverage. This is less than the cost to build and staff one modern hospital in a wealthy country.
• For every US $10 spent on health care in poor countries, only US $0.02 goes on TB control.
• In 1990, only US $16 million in foreign aid was provided for TB control in developing countries.
• While infectious diseases cause nearly 30 percent of deaths in poor countries, they receive only 1.5 percent in foreign aid.