Turning Back the Tuberculosis Tide

Photos courtesy of WHO/STB/Colors Magazine/J. Mollison

Tuberculosis, a publication prepared for the World Health Organization by editors and photographers from Colors Magazine, attempts to put a human face on the TB epidemic with pictures of patients from around the world.

An ancient scourge, tuberculosis has made a comeback in recent years. According to a recent World Health Organization report, tuberculosis (TB) incidence increased by one percent in 2003.¹ Though one-third of the world's population carries latent TB, roughly eight million people per year experience progression to the active form of the disease. Prevalence and mortality have gone down, however, since the early 1990s, meaning that while the number of cases has increased, TB control programs are finding and curing increasing numbers.

But the situation has deteriorated rapidly in Africa, the former Soviet Union, and parts of Eastern Europe due to the HIV epidemic, and poor healthcare systems that contribute to ...