Recovery time TBD: Tuberculosis and the fight for global health

When considering disease endemics in the developing world, the focus falls most commonly on HIV and malaria. Attention is rarely turned to tuberculosis (TB), a far deadlier disease that annually kills more people than the aforementioned two combined, with 1.8 million deaths in 2015, alone. It is a disease which has existed in some form or another for millennia. From the instructional histories of Hippocrates to the grim tales of Dostoyevsky, tuberculosis (or “consumption” in pre-germ theory literary works) has ravened the poor and destitute. Despite best attempts by modern medicine, the disease is far from eradicated.