Giving Compass' Take:

• TB is preventable and curable but it continues to kill more than a million people each year. Inequality and lack of access to medical knowledge and treatment are responsible for the continued prevalence of the disease.

• How does TB fit into the larger global health picture? How can TB be addressed in concert with other preventable and curable diseases?

• Learn how India plans to eliminate TB.

The global response to tuberculosis has saved millions of lives; TB treatment saved 53 million lives between 2000 and 2016. Yet each year millions still suffer, and often die, from this preventable, treatable, and curable disease.

In 2016, there were 10.4 million new cases – the same as in 2015 – and 1.7 million people died from TB, a disease that kills more people than any other infectious disease globally, including HIV and malaria combined.

We research and analyze responses to TB around the world, and we have seen the intersection between human rights and TB. Without a response to TB based in human rights – including moving rapidly to community-based care and improving the conditions in prisons – we believe that progress will remain fatally slow.

TB was once a disease that affected people from all walks of life – including Frederic Chopin, Eleanor Roosevelt and George Orwell.

Today TB is a disease of poverty and inequality, disproportionately impacting low- and middle-income countries and the most marginalized and vulnerable people within communities.

TB is no longer an unavoidable fact of life, but a result of health and human rights conditions. Among them are lack of access to high-quality health services, including rapid diagnostic tools and effective medicines that do not cause severe side effects, inadequate nutrition, sanitation, and safe and healthy working environments. There are also discriminatory laws, policies, and systems that directly or indirectly prevent migrants, indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups from accessing health care and information.

Read more about ending TB by Drew Aiken and Eric Friedman at The Conversation