Paul Farmer in a comment, published in The Lancet, reflects on the "new era" of better and safer treatment for multidrug-resistant TB.

In the history of humankind, tuberculosis (TB) has killed more people than any other disease. TB remains one of the top 10 causes of deaths in the world and competes with HIV/AIDS as the biggest killer amongst all infectious diseases. One of the overarching problems with TB is how difficult it can be to find and properly diagnose the people who are infected with active TB. As a result, approximately 3 million people who are not aware that they have active tuberculosis and are unwittingly infecting, on average, 15 to 20 more people beyond themselves. You can picture the exponential spread of the disease and recognize how frighteningly quickly those numbers add up: 1.4 million people will die from the disease this year, two to three people every minute, nearly 4000 every day. Yet most people know almost nothing of TB and likely think that it is no longer a public health challenge.

An essay seeking to elucidate the reasons for the anemic response to drug-resistant tuberculosis by examining the recent history of tuberculosis policy.