How much do Patients Suffering from Pulmonary Tuberculosis Know about their Disease?

Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the major global health threats leading to morbidity and mortality [1,2]. One in three persons across the world representing 2–3 billion individuals are known to be infected with Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (M. Tuberculosis), and of these 5–15% are likely to develop active TB disease during their lifetime [3]. In 2014, an estimated 9.6 million people fell ill due to TB, around 1.5 million people died from the disease including 1.1 million HIV-negative persons and 400,000 HIV patients [3]. While TB is present in every country majority of TB sufferers live in low and middle income countries especially in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia [2]. Over the past decade, significant progress has been made towards TB control with most of the TB targets set as part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) [3]. TB mortality for instance has declined by 47% since 1990, with nearly all of that happening in the era of the MDGs. In all, effective diagnosis and treatment of TB has been estimated to have saved over 40 million lives between 2000 and 2014 [3].