For the first time in five years, the tide seems to be turning against tuberculosis.

A new report by the World Health Organization suggests that infections and deaths are once again declining after the setbacks of the COVID-19 years.

Between 2023 and 2024, new infections fell by nearly 2%, and deaths by 3%.

“Declines are encouraging, but they do not mean victory,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general.

Treatment success rates are improving too, reaching 88%.

But the respite is fragile, and the old enemy remains lethal.

TB still kills over 1.2 million people each year and infects more than ten million.

“It is unconscionable that a curable disease still claims so many lives.”

Funding is the Achilles heel.

Global spending on TB stands at a meagre $5.9 billion, barely a quarter of what experts say is needed.

The WHO warns that stagnation could cost two million lives in the coming decade.

Rapid testing has expanded across much of the globe, covering more than half the world’s population.

In Africa, the burden has dropped sharply since 2015; Europe has made even steeper gains.

Yet most cases, nearly nine in ten, remain concentrated in thirty countries, where inequality and weak health systems leave millions vulnerable.

Progress, then, hangs by a thread.

The disease that haunted industrial Europe in the nineteenth century still stalks the slums of the twenty-first.

And without money, science alone will not save those who cough in silence.