The chart above shows the good-news-bad-news scenario that is the decades-long fight against TB in Afghanistan. TB is still a crushing problem there; the country has among the world’s highest rates of the disease, which killed some 10,000 people in 2017. But if you glance at this chart and think that we haven’t made much progress, look again. We’re finding and treating more people with TB in Afghanistan than ever before. In 2001, we were missing three quarters of presumptive TB patients — that is a whopping 75% gap in case detection.
