UK TB voices: The stories behind the statistics
A report designed to support the voices of those who often find themselves forgotten among the numbers.
Why this report and why now?
The story of TB is told in numbers. The deadliest pandemic in human history, TB continues to kill 1.3 million people a year. More than 2 billion people carry the TB bacteria through latent TB infection. Individual treatment costs run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds, drug regimens are measured in months and years, the number of pills in the thousands. The funding shortfalls run into the billions.
At the heart of each of those statistics is an individual: a patient, a husband, a wife, a daughter, a son, someone who has had their life irrevocably changed by TB. Under the flood of numbers and figures, all too often, their tales of treatment and
suffering are drowned out.
Yet those are the voices that must not be lost. They are the people who know this disease best, from living with it, from fighting with it, and from working with it. Their stories underpin the global fight against TB, highlighting that the true story of
disease is not told in the millions or billions, but in the daily struggle between one person and an implacable, remorseless disease.
This report is designed to cast a light on those daily battles and to highlight that TB is not a disease of a bygone era but a real and present public health threat right here in the UK. Most importantly, this report is designed to support the voices of those who often find themselves forgotten among the numbers.
