The World Health Organisation has said that Tuberculosis is now the leading cause of death from infectious diseases worldwide.
In a report released on Wednesday, WHO claimed that TB infections now rivals HIV/AIDS as leading cause of death from infectious diseases.
The report found that during 2014, 1.1 million people died of TB in 2014. During the same period, HIV/AIDS killed 1.2 million people globally, including 400,000 who were infected with both HIV and TB.
“The good news is that TB intervention has saved some 43 million lives since 2000,” Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO TB program told Reuters.
Dr. Grania Brigden, interim medical director of Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders added that the report should serve as a wake-up call that enormous work still needs to be done to reduce the burden of this ancient, yet curable disease.
Raviglione insisted that it is time to start funding TB at a level that can make even more of a difference in curbing global deaths.