Texts for Tuberculosis: Enabling Patient Advocacy

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the top three global infectious diseases; one third of the world’s population – approximately 2.2 billion people – bears either an active or latent infection. The disease is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a pathogen which usually infects the lungs and spreads through the air from persons with active respiratory TB. Without treatment, a contagious, active TB infection is fatal, accounting for about 1.3 million deaths annually.

Since 1990, the global incidence rate of tuberculosis has continued to rise, and World Health Organization (WHO) data indicate that case detection rates were still as low as 67% in 2008. Once diagnosed, global treatment success rates have been as high as 86% in 2007, when default rates were especially low. Unfortunately, patients continue to default on the standard 6-month first-line TB treatment regimen.

Failure to complete the full TB treatment course has dampened cure rates, and has induced bacterium resistance to first-line drugs. Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) accounts for 3.6% of incident TB cases worldwide. High-incident countries report that up to 22% of all TB cases are MDR-TB.  In South Africa , the prevalence of MDR-TB among new TB cases has exceeded 10%, and continues to grow despite continued public health control efforts.