Sir, The World Health Organisation’s annual Global Tuberculosis Control report showed this month that recent progress in controlling TB worldwide was slowing down. Incidence rates are declining more slowly than in previous years and case detection in many countries has begun to stall. Two aspects of the epidemic are threatening to undo progress further: multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and a lethal combination of TB and HIV co-infection.

The first case of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis was confirmed in the UK last week (report, March 22). While most TB cases and deaths still occur in the developing world, there has been a worrying resurgence of TB in developed countries like our own. TB is a preventable and treatable disease; yet ignorance, failure to invest in research and the development of new tools and a lack of political will are enabling the disease to spread, killing an astounding two million people each year.

On both an international and national level, a renewed and intensified effort to scale up prevention, detection and treatment of all TB cases is needed. To mark World TB Day (March 24), a group of organisations from the private sector, civil society and the public sector have this week joined together to form a new UK Coalition to Stop TB. The aim of the coalition will be to raise awareness of TB and to ensure that fighting TB remains a high political priority for the UK Government.

An age-old disease that many thought had gone away now threatens resistance to drugs on a wide scale and is joining forces with another infectious killer — HIV — to devastating effect. It is therefore imperative that all sectors work in partnership to address this humanitarian crisis before it gets much worse.

Alastair Burtt

Chief executive, Target Tuberculosis

Sheila Davie

Executive director, RESULTS UK

Dr Giorgio Roscigno

Chief executive, FIND Diagnostics

Dr Jerald C. Sadoff

President and CEO, Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation

Paul Sommerfeld

Chair of trustees, TB Alert

Paul Thorn

Director, Tuberculosis Survival Project

Professor John Walley

COMDIS Research Consortium

On behalf of the UK Coalition to Stop TB

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