In line with the yearly World Health Organization's (WHO) report "Global Tuberculosis Control 2010", experts reveal that tuberculosis infection rate remained static in 2008 and 2009. Approximately 9.4 million inhabitants of the globe caught the disease last year and the year before.

Especially in India and China, measures to decrease tuberculosis infections contributed to the stabilization of new infection cases. The report further reads that in 22 countries of the world the infection rate is even slightly falling and only in South Africa it is increasing.

Although the new report brings positive developments to light, the director of the tuberculosis prevention unit at the WHO, Mario Raviglione, points out: "There are still 1.7 million deaths a year from a disease that is perfectly curable in 2010. At this pace it will take millennia to get rid of TB".

The authors of the report underline that in cases of highly effective, mostly government funded anti-tuberculosis campaigns infection rates could be significantly reduced as a consequence.

The example of India stands out as officials of the nation achieved to introduce prevention measures all over the large country within a period of merely ten years.

Despite some very positive example in the fight against the disease, the WHO highlights that still every day an estimated amount of 4,700 victims pass away due to a tuberculosis infection.