1) In 2023, an estimated 10.8 million people fell ill with TB worldwide, including 6.0 million men, 3.6 million women and 1.3 million children and young adolescents. TB is present in all countries and age groups. TB is curable and preventable.
2) A total of 1.25 million people died from TB in 2023 (including 161 000 people with HIV). Worldwide, TB has probably returned to being the world’s leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, following three years in which it was replaced by coronavirus disease (COVID-19). It was also the leading killer of people with HIV and a major cause of death related to antimicrobial resistance.
3) In 2023, the 30 high TB burden countries accounted for 87% of new TB cases. Eight countries account for two thirds of the total: Bangladesh, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines.
4) In 2023, 1.3 million children and young adolescents fell ill with TB globally. Child and adolescent TB is often overlooked by health providers and can be difficult to diagnose and treat, globally in 2023, treatment coverage was only 55% among children and young adolescents.
5) TB is the leading killer of people with HIV. Among all incident cases of TB in 2023, 6.1% were people living with HIV; this proportion has been steadily declining for several years. In 2023, 464 000 people living with HIV fell ill with TB, with the highest burden in countries in the WHO African Region.
The global coverage of HIV testing among people diagnosed with TB remained high in 2023, at 80%. The global coverage of antiretroviral therapy for people living with HIV who were newly diagnosed and reported with TB was 89% in 2023.
6)Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) remains a public health crisis and a health security threat. Only about 2 in 5 people with drug resistant TB accessed treatment in 2023. In some cases, an even more severe form of multidrug-resistant TB may develop with bad treatment. Pre-extensively drug-resistant TB (pre-XDR-TB and XDR-TB) are forms of TB that respond to even fewer available medicines.
7)Global efforts to combat TB have saved an estimated 79 million lives since the year 2000, but important diagnostic and treatment gaps persist. The treatment success rate for people treated for TB with first-line regimens was 88% in 2022.
8)Globally, TB incidence rose by 4.6% between 2020 and 2023, reversing declines of about 2% per year for most of the past 2 decades. This is far from the 10% annual decline that was required to achieve by 2025 milestones of the WHO End TB Strategy, and then to an average of 17% per year from 2025 to 2035.
9)Of the estimated 10.84 million people who fell ill with TB in 2023, only 8.16 million were detected and notified, leading to a gap of 2.7 million cases. Ending the TB epidemic by 2030 is among the health targets of the Sustainable Development Goals.
10) At the 2023 UN high-level meeting on TB, Member States committed to mobilizing at least US$ 22 billion for TB prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care by 2027. There was a decline in global funding available on essential TB services from US$ 6.5 billion in 2019 to US$ 5.7 billion in 2023, which is only 26% of the global target of US$ 22 billion. Financing for TB research and development at US$ 1.0 billion in 2022 also continues to fall far short of the global target of US$ 5 billion per year, constrained by the overall level of investment.
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