Many developing countries have a serious tuberculosis (TB) problem. China is no exception. It is estimated that 1.4 million people across the country develop active TB each year, of which 600 000 have the highly infectious form of TB, and the disease kills several hundred people each day in China.
During the 1990s China fell short of meeting the WHO's global targets for detecting and treating TB cases. Consequently, TB is still common in China and the disease continues to blight the country's poor and vulnerable.
But change is afoot. In 2004, the Chinese government pledged to meet the global targets for detection and treatment and backed up this commitment by increasing central funding for its national TB control programme from $5 million to over $35 million per year. In the wake of SARS, China has set up a new Internet-based reporting system for infectious diseases including TB.
As a result TB control programmes in the provinces are undergoing rapid expansion. The immediate challenges for the WHO are to assist China to maintain the quality of its TB services as they expand and to address the shortages of staff and lab services needed to support the expanding programme.