A large group of TB Hill Day participants posing for a photo on the Capitol steps in Washington DC
Thank you for a record breaking #TBHillDay 2026! Together, we will end TB ❤️
I have been told on good authority that Paul Farmer would be incredibly proud of everything we’ve built with @tbfighters.org and #tbhillday and that will be keeping me going for a WHILE
This is so heartbreaking and makes nothing better and no one safer. It is the punitive act of an administration that values fealty over human health.
cover of my new book everything is tuberculosis: the history and persistence of our deadliest infection
As the U.S. Government endeavors to make tuberculosis great again, please consider preordering a signed copy of my book about our deadliest infection, its long history, and why in the 75 years since TB became curable, we've allowed over 150,000,000 people to die of the disease. everythingistb.com
Xpert cartridges for drug-resistant TB are still priced at $15, and tests for other diseases including HIV, hepatitis, etc. cost up to $20. This is much higher than the production costs calculated as part of independent research, and 1.5 times the median weekly wage in countries like Sierra Leone.
Even though Danaher has agreed to reduce the price of their standard TB cartridges from $10 to $8 for low- and middle-income countries, they have not published the results of any audit. Without this audit, the best information available shows that GeneXpert tests cost less than $5 to produce.
More than 2 in 5 patients with multidrug-resistant TB do not have access to proper testing to find out if their TB is a multidrug-resistant strain. As a result, over half of them end up receiving long, expensive treatments that won't even help
Tuberculosis has been completely curable for over 70 years, and yet over 150 million people have died of the disease since then. Death from TB is not caused by the bacteria alone anymore; it’s caused by human choice. We could live in a world where no one dies of TB, yet we choose not to.
