WHO reports 10.6 million TB cases in 2025 as domestic funding rises 14%

Domestic funding for tuberculosis rose 14% to US$5.6 billion between 2024 and 2025, partly offsetting a decline in international financing of a similar scale, the World Health Organization said in its Global Tuberculosis Report 2026.

An estimated 10.6 million people developed TB in 2025 and 1.1 million died from it. Deaths have fallen 35% since 2015 and treatment has saved an estimated 86 million lives since 2000, reaching the first mortality milestone of WHO's End TB Strategy — five years later than planned.

Incidence has declined 14% since 2015, far short of the 50% reduction milestone for 2025, and TB remains the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent.

The burden is concentrated: 30 countries accounted for 88% of people who developed TB in 2025. Between 2015 and 2025, incidence fell 42% in the WHO European Region and 30% in the African Region, against 18% in South-East Asia and 6.6% in the Eastern Mediterranean. There was no net change in the Western Pacific, and incidence in the Americas rose for the fifth consecutive year, reaching 13% above 2015 levels.

Of the 10.6 million who developed TB, 8.4 million were diagnosed, leaving 2.2 million undiagnosed or unreported. Just 59% of newly diagnosed patients were tested with a WHO-recommended rapid diagnostic test, against a 100% target for 2027.

Of an estimated 370,000 people who developed rifampicin-resistant TB, 42% received treatment. Uptake of the WHO-recommended six-month regimen among those treated rose from 18% in 2024 to 42% in 2025.

Research funding stood at US$1.2 billion in 2023, less than one quarter of the US$5 billion annual target for 2027.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said that "many governments have dug deeper into their own budgets" to protect the progress made. He added that more than one million people still "die each year from a disease that is preventable and treatable."