In 2023, 10.8 million people contracted TB, including almost 1.3 million children under the age of 15. Of these, 1.25 million people lost their lives from it, with 166,000 being children. TB mortality decreased by nine percent compared to the 2019 baseline—representing the second year in a row that mortality decreased below pre-pandemic levels.
Of the 10.8 million people who contracted TB in 2023, almost 8.2 million were initiated on treatment. An estimated 400,000 people developed drug-resistant TB (DR-TB), with 175,923 of those diagnosed and started on treatment. Drug-resistant forms of TB—to include multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB)—are one of the top ten causes of all antimicrobial resistance (AMR) deaths and remain a global public health challenge in that these variants are more difficult and expensive to diagnose and treat. In 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) highlighted the threat of DR-TB by adding the drug-resistant strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to the critical category on its Bacterial Priority Pathogens List.
