Tuberculosis (TB)

World TB Day 2026 — Accelerating Action to End TB in Africa

World TB Day, commemorated on 24 March each year, offers an important opportunity to raise awareness about tuberculosis (TB) and to reflect on progress and remaining challenges in ending this centuries-old disease. It also serves to mobilize political commitment, social action, and investment toward achieving the End TB Strategy targets.

According to the 2025 WHO Global Tuberculosis Report, TB remains among the top ten causes of death globally and continues to be the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, above HIV/AIDS. The African Region accounts for approximately one-third of global TB deaths, reflecting the high burden and persistent inequities in access to diagnosis, treatment, and prevention services.

The region has, however, made important strides in expanding the use of rapid molecular diagnostics, digital X-ray with AI-powered screening, and community-based TB care. Despite these achievements, challenges remain—particularly the increase in multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) cases, which threaten to reverse recent gains and pose a serious public health security concern.

World TB Day provides a platform for people affected by TB, communities, civil society, policy-makers, and partners to renew commitments and strengthen collaboration for equitable and sustainable TB responses. In 2026, WHO urges all countries in the African Region to accelerate action, invest in innovation, and scale up preventive treatment, ensuring that no one is left behind in the journey to end TB.

Factsheet

Key Facts (Updated 2026)

TB remains one of the world's top infectious killers and the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, and it is a major cause of death among people living with HIV and an important contributor to deaths associated with antimicrobial resistance.
In 2024, an estimated 10.7 million people developed TB worldwide and about 1.23 million people died from the disease. The WHO African Region accounts for a substantial share of these cases and deaths, despite recent progress in expanding access to TB services.
The WHO African Region has achieved faster declines in TB burden than the global average. Between 2015 and 2024, TB incidence fell by about 28% and TB deaths by about 46% in the Region, compared with global reductions of 12% and 29% over the same period.
Children remain heavily affected by TB. In 2024, an estimated about 337,000 children (0–14 years) developed TB in the WHO African Region, reflecting ongoing gaps in prevention, early diagnosis and child-friendly treatment services.
TB and HIV continue to be a lethal combination. In 2024, an estimated about 390,000 TB cases in the WHO African Region were attributable to HIV infection (approximately one third of all TB cases in the Region), with an uncertainty range of 307,000 to 486,000 cases.
In 2024, an estimated about 57,000 people in the WHO African Region developed multidrug-resistant or rifampicin-resistant TB (MDR/RR-TB), representing around 15% of the global MDR/RR-TB burden (uncertainty range: 46,000–68,000 cases).
Eight countries continue to account for about two-thirds of global TB cases: India, Indonesia, the Philippines, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bangladesh.
TB incidence and mortality are declining but still far from End TB milestones. From 2015 to 2024, global TB incidence fell by only 12% and TB deaths by 29%, still well below the 2025 End TB Strategy milestones of 50% and 75% reductions, respectively.
Between 2010 and 2024, TB diagnosis and treatment are estimated to have averted about 52 million deaths globally, including roughly 12 million deaths in the WHO African Region, among both HIV-negative people and people living with HIV.
Ending the TB epidemic by 2030 remains a key health target of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the WHO End TB Strategy, requiring sustained political commitment, financing and accelerated scale-up of TB prevention, diagnosis and treatment, especially in high-burden African countries.

Tuberculosis (TB) is caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) that most often affect the lungs. Tuberculosis is curable and preventable.

TB is spread from person to person through the air. When people with lung TB cough, sneeze or spit, they propel the TB germs into the air. A person needs to inhale only a few of these germs to become infected.

About one-third of the world's population has latent TB, which means people have been infected by TB bacteria but are not (yet) ill with the disease and cannot transmit the disease.

People infected with TB bacteria have a 10% lifetime risk of falling ill with TB. However, persons with compromised immune systems, such as people living with HIV, malnutrition or diabetes, or people who use tobacco, have a much higher risk of falling ill.

When a person develops active TB disease, the symptoms (such as cough, fever, night sweats, or weight loss) may be mild for many months. This can lead to delays in seeking care, and results in transmission of the bacteria to others. People with active TB can infect 10–15 other people through close contact over the course of a year. Without proper treatment, 45% of HIV-negative people with TB on average and nearly all HIV-positive people with TB will die.

Key facts

Anti-TB medicines have been used for decades, and drug-resistant strains have been documented in every country surveyed. Drug resistance emerges when medicines are misused or mismanaged, for example through incorrect prescriptions, poor-quality drugs, interruptions in drug supply or when patients stop treatment too early.
Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is TB caused by bacteria that are resistant to at least isoniazid and rifampicin, the 2 most powerful first-line anti-TB drugs. MDR-TB and rifampicin-resistant TB (RR-TB) require treatment with second-line regimens that are more complex, more expensive and can have important side effects. In some patients, more severe resistance develops as pre-XDR-TB or XDR-TB, where the bacteria no longer respond to rifampicin plus key second-line medicines, leaving very limited treatment options.
Globally, the estimated number of people who developed MDR/RR-TB has been falling since 2015, reaching about 390,000 incident cases in 2024. In the WHO African Region, an estimated about 57,000 people developed MDR/RR-TB in 2024, representing around 15% of the global MDR/RR-TB burden. Despite this decline, the scale of drug-resistant TB in Africa remains a major threat to progress towards ending TB.
Detection of MDR/RR-TB requires bacteriological confirmation of TB and testing for drug resistance using WHO-recommended rapid molecular tests, culture-based methods or sequencing. In 2024, 83% of people with bacteriologically confirmed TB globally were tested for rifampicin resistance, with coverage improving in all regions.
WHO now prioritizes shorter all-oral regimens for most people with MDR/RR-TB. Two 6-month regimens are recommended as first choice, including the BPaLM regimen (bedaquiline, pretomanid, linezolid and moxifloxacin) and an all-oral bedaquiline–delamanid–linezolid–fluoroquinolone/clofazimine regimen that can be used in children and pregnant women. Treatment success for MDR/RR-TB has improved, reaching 71% in the 2022 global cohort, and in 2024 about 45% of MDR/RR-TB patients in the WHO African Region were already on 6-month regimens.
WHO recommends rapid scale-up of all-oral, shorter MDR/RR-TB regimens, together with expanded access to rapid diagnostics and robust patient support, to prevent further emergence of resistance and protect progress towards the End TB targets in the African Region and globally.

WHO pursues 6 core functions in addressing TB:

Providing global leadership on matters critical to TB.
Developing evidence-based policies, strategies and standards for TB prevention, care and control, and monitoring their implementation.
Providing technical support to Member States, catalyzing change, and building sustainable capacity.
Monitoring the global TB situation, and measuring progress in TB care, control, and financing.
Shaping the TB research agenda and stimulating the production, translation and dissemination of valuable knowledge.
Facilitating and engaging in partnerships for TB action.

Growing political commitment in the African region is driving progress towards ending the TB epidemic. Many countries have endorsed the WHO End TB Strategy and its regional framework, both of which set ambitious but achievable targets for reducing TB by 2030.

These targets aim for:

90% reduction in TB deaths compared to 2015 levels.
80% reduction in new TB cases compared to 2015 levels.
Elimination of catastrophic costs faced by TB-affected families.

The WHO End TB Strategy, adopted globally in 2014, provides a roadmap for achieving these goals. It sets similar global targets for TB reduction and emphasizes eliminating the financial burden of TB on families.

Looking beyond 2030, the WHO has even more ambitious targets to virtually eliminate TB as a public health threat by 2035.

The Strategy outlines three strategic pillars that need to be put in place to effectively end the epidemic:

Pillar 1: integrated patient-centred care and prevention
Pillar 2: bold policies and supportive systems
Pillar 3: intensified research and innovation

The success of the Strategy will depend on countries respecting the following 4 key principles as they implement the interventions outlined in each pillar:

government stewardship and accountability, with monitoring and evaluation
strong coalition with civil society organizations and communities
protection and promotion of human rights, ethics, and equity
adaptation of the strategy and targets at the country level, with global collaboration