If we get it right, the world could save more than 1.2 million lives every year.

In the United Kingdom, tuberculosis (TB) is a disease you only hear about in history class. It is taught alongside lessons on the large cholera epidemics in the 19th century, the Black Death, or the Spanish flu pandemic. Across the rich world, TB was once a huge killer, but it is a disease that is largely consigned to the past. Death rates are very low in high-income countries.

However, TB is still very common in large parts of the world. It kills 1.2 million people every year, more than any other infectious disease.

Someone in Lesotho, the Central African Republic, or Gabon is at least 3,000 times more likely to die from TB than someone in the United States or Denmark. You can see these huge differences in death rates in the chart below.

This inequality is unacceptable. We know what causes tuberculosis and how it spreads. We’ve known how to test and screen for TB for over a century. And we’ve had effective antibiotics to treat it for over 70 years. We could make fast progress against this disease at a relatively low cost. And there’s a lot at stake: as we explained in one of our previous articles, closing the gap between countries like the United States and elsewhere would save over one million lives a year.

In this article, we look at why there are such large differences in TB death rates, and what can be done to consign tuberculosis to the history books, everywhere.

Why are death rates so high in some countries?

All newborns should have access to vaccination

Testing and prevention programs are the most cost-effective way to save lives

The cost of treating drug-resistant TB has fallen, but it is still very high

Expensive treatments can cripple many families

Tuberculosis is a disease that the world can beat

...read more at ourworldindata.org