By Desire Uzochukwu
Countries have increased domestic investment in tuberculosis (TB) control by 14 per cent to $5.6 billion, cushioning the impact of declining international funding and helping to protect gains made against the deadly disease.
However, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that progress remains too slow, with 10.6 million people developing TB and 1.1 million dying from the disease in 2025, despite improvements in prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
The WHO disclosed this in its Global Tuberculosis Report 2026, released yesterday, November 12, noting that increased domestic financing between 2024 and 2025 had helped offset a decline in international funding of a similar scale.
The development highlights the growing responsibility of governments to sustain essential TB services as global health financing comes under increasing pressure.
WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the continued decline in TB cases and deaths was encouraging, particularly against the backdrop of funding cuts confronting many countries.
“The continued decline in TB cases and deaths is very encouraging, especially given the challenges many countries have faced from funding cuts,” he said.
“Many governments have dug deeper into their own budgets to protect the gains they have made. And yet, more than one million people still die each year from a disease that is preventable and treatable.”
Tedros urged governments and international partners to expand access to TB services, protect essential funding and accelerate the development of new tools to end the epidemic.
According to the report, TB deaths have declined by 35 per cent since 2015, while treatment has saved an estimated 86 million lives since 2000.
Although the world has achieved the first mortality milestone of WHO’s End TB Strategy, it did so five years behind schedule.
The decline in new infections has also been considerably slower than anticipated. Global TB incidence fell by just 14 per cent between 2015 and 2025, missing the strategy’s target of a 50 per cent reduction by 2025.
TB remains the world’s leading cause of death from a single infectious agent.
The report further revealed significant gaps in diagnosis and treatment, with an estimated 2.2 million people who developed TB in 2025 either undiagnosed or unreported.
Of the 10.6 million estimated cases, only 8.4 million were diagnosed. It also found that just 59 per cent of newly diagnosed patients were tested using WHO-recommended rapid diagnostic tests, far below the 100 per cent target set for 2027.
Drug-resistant TB remains another major concern. Of the estimated 370,000 people who developed rifampicin-resistant TB in 2025, only 42 per cent received treatment.
However, access to the WHO-recommended six-month treatment regimen improved, with uptake rising from 18 per cent in 2024 to 42 per cent in 2025.
The burden of the disease remains concentrated in 30 countries, which accounted for 88 per cent of all people who developed TB globally in 2025.
Regional performance was uneven. Between 2015 and 2025, TB incidence declined by 42 per cent in the WHO European Region and 30 per cent in the African Region, compared with 18 per cent in South-East Asia and 6.6 per cent in the Eastern Mediterranean.
There was no overall reduction in the Western Pacific, while incidence in the Americas rose for the fifth consecutive year in 2025, reaching 13 per cent above its 2015 level.
WHO attributed the differences to variations in disease risk factors, health system capacity, access to healthcare and sustained investment.
Beyond diagnosis and treatment, the report identified inadequate research funding as a major obstacle to ending the epidemic.
Investment in TB research stood at $1.2 billion in 2023, less than one-quarter of the $5 billion annual funding required by 2027.
WHO said increased investment was urgently needed to develop and roll out new vaccines, diagnostic tools and treatments.
It called on governments and development partners to strengthen political commitment, protect and increase sustainable TB financing, expand access to prevention, rapid diagnosis and effective treatment, and accelerate research into new tools.
The organisation warned that substantially faster progress was needed to put the world back on track towards ending the TB epidemic.
