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The World Health Organisation on Tuesday said that more than 8 million people were diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) last year. This is the highest number of cases that have been recorded since the U.N. health agency began keeping track in 1995. In 2022, the WHO recorded 7.5 million cases of TB.

Nearly 1.25 million people died of TB last year and added that TB likely returned to being the world’s top infectious disease killer after being replaced by COVID-19 during the pandemic. WHO said that TB continues to mostly affect people in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Western Pacific; India, Indonesia, China, the Philippines and Pakistan account for more than half of the world’s cases, according to a report in AP.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement said, “The fact that TB still kills and sickens so many people is an outrage, when we have the tools to prevent it, detect it and treat it.”

While there has been a slight drop in the number of TB-related deaths to 1.25 million in 2023 from 1.32 million in 2022, the number of people being newly infected is beginning to stabilise. WHO noted that of the 400,000 people estimated to have drug-resistant TB last year, fewer than half were diagnosed and treated.

Tuberculosis is a condition which causes infection in your lungs and other tissues. While it usually affects your lungs, TB can also affect several other organs of your body like your spine, brain or kidneys. The condition can spread from one person to the other person when the infected person coughs, sneezes or sings.

This puts tiny droplets with the germs into the air and when a healthy person breathes the droplets, the germs enter the lungs which eventually affects a healthy person. People suffering from HIV/AIDS or those who have a weak immune system have a higher risk of contracting TB. There are drugs that can treat the condition, however, there are some forms of the bacteria that don’t respond to treatments.

Tuberculosis is caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Experts say that a person with a latent TB infection cannot pass the disease to other people. A person taking drugs to treat active TB disease usually can’t pass the disease after 2 to 3 weeks of treatment.

WHO says that only a small proportion of people who get infected with TB will get TB disease and symptoms. People with the infection usually don’t feel sick and aren’t contagious. Here, take a look at some of the common symptoms of TB.

The symptoms people get depend on which part of the body is affected by TB. While TB usually affects the lungs, it can also involve the kidneys, brain, spine and skin.

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