Tuberculosis is the disease that never did really go away.

In the UK...

• TB never went away in the UK and numbers have been rising since 1987.  Cases in London have doubled in the past decade.  Because many people (even some doctors) believe TB to be a disease of the past, patients can go undiagnosed for too long - leading to complications and further infection of family, colleagues and friends.
  
• In the UK around 400 people die of TB each year, generally because of very late diagnosis or complicating factors of other illnesses.
  
• There are more new diagnoses of TB in the UK each year than new diagnoses of HIV.
  
• TB cannot be controlled in the UK unless it is controlled worldwide

Worldwide...

• In 1993 the World Health Organisation declared TB a Global Emergency
  
• One third of the World's population - nearly two billion people - is infected with TB. Ten million people a year develop the active disease. Two million die each year.  That is the equivalent of the number of people killed in the Boxing Day 2004 Tsunami EVERY TWO MONTHS.
  
• Every minute two children worldwide die of Tuberculosis.
  
• Less than 40% of people with TB get get access to treatment - because they don't know it exists, because they can't get to a clinic or because they are too afraid of the stigma of being a TB patient.