The Global Challenge of Tuberculosis among People Living with HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is widely acknowledged as one of the driving forces behind the global tuberculosis (TB) pandemic. Computer models estimate that about 1.1 million (13 percent) of the 8.6 million people newly identified with active TB disease in 2012 were people living with HIV (PLHIV). Twenty percent of TB patients who were actually tested for HIV in that year were found to be infected; 75 percent of these new coinfections occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Of 1.3 million TB-related deaths reported in 2012, approximately 25 percent (320,000) were in PLHIV. Conversely, TB is the leading cause of severe illness and death in PLHIV, estimated to be responsible for at least 20 percent of all AIDS deaths globally. The initial scale-up of collaborative TB/HIV activities that saved 1.3 million lives from 2005 through 2011 needs to be expanded.