While some pandemics elicit a 100-day mission, tuberculosis has an unfinished 100-year mission.
One of the leading initiatives set up in the wake of COVID-19 is the 100-day mission. It is an effort to ensure that new vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments will be available to tackle a novel pathogen pandemic within 100 days of its initial detection.
In stark contrast with the kind of attention COVID-19 sparked, the global fight against tuberculosis gets so little attention that we’re looking at a 100-year timescale. After being overtaken by COVID-19 in 2021, early indications are that TB killed more people in 2022 than any other infectious disease.