The emergence of extensively drug-resistant TB sounds the alarm that the world is facing an urgent health crisis. People and communities have the right to demand more effective action from their governments and from global leaders.
—George Soros at the 2006 World Conference on Lung Health

According to estimates from the World Health Organization, there are nearly nine million cases of tuberculosis (TB) worldwide every year, resulting in 1.6 million deaths. Although TB is curable, it is the leading cause of death among people with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Failure to properly address TB has led to drug-resistant strains of the disease, which are more complicated and costly to diagnose and treat. About 420,000 new cases of drug-resistant TB are diagnosed each year, but only two percent of these cases receive treatment under current health systems.

Public Health Watch, a project of the OSI Public Health Program, engages in grantmaking and advocacy activities that link TB and HIV/AIDS services in efforts to contain and reverse the twin epidemics. Activities include a $3 million grant to help health care workers in Lesotho, a small southern African country, more effectively treat people dually infected with drug-resistant TB and HIV/AIDS.

Public Health Watch also helps ensure that governments live up to the promises embodied in international health commitments. These commitments include the Amsterdam Declaration to Stop TB, the Washington Commitment, and the UN Millennium Development Goals.

OSI is a member of the Stop TB Partnership and works with civil society organizations to monitor national efforts to control TB and TB/HIV co-infection. In a series of reports published in 2006, Public Health Watch demonstrated that community participation and public awareness—which have lent vital support to the fight against HIV/AIDS—have been excluded from efforts to control the spread of TB. The reports also revealed that due to a lack of information, stigma, and the prohibitive cost of care, many patients do not seek or fail to complete TB treatment. And when patients default on treatment, they run the risk of developing drug-resistant forms of TB that can be passed to others, threatening to transform a curable disease into an untreatable plague.

The OSI Roma Health Project and International Harm Reduction Development Program also support projects aimed at reducing the spread of TB among marginalized communities.