The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that tuberculosis remained the world's leading infectious killer in 2025. Its annual Global Tuberculosis Report, published in Geneva, warned that cuts to US foreign aid had disrupted case-finding and treatment in several high-burden countries.

The report found that around 1.2 million people died from the disease last year, a level broadly unchanged from 2024. Officials in the WHO's tuberculosis programme said the number of people newly diagnosed and notified to national programmes fell for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic. That fall followed several years of record notifications, which the agency had previously credited with narrowing the gap between estimated and reported cases.

According to the report, the steepest disruptions were recorded in countries that had relied heavily on funding from the US Agency for International Development, including parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia. The agency said the dismantling of USAID programmes in 2025 interrupted sample transport, contact tracing and the supply of rapid molecular tests. India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Pakistan continued to account for a large share of the global burden, the report said.

Dr Tereza Kasaeva, director of the WHO Department for HIV, TB, Hepatitis and STIs, said undiagnosed cases would fuel further transmission and drug resistance unless donors and national governments filled the funding gap. The report said global spending on TB prevention and care remained far below the annual target agreed by member states at the 2023 UN high-level meeting. Stop TB Partnership, the Geneva-based alliance, said the figures confirmed warnings it had issued since aid was frozen.

The WHO said the world was now significantly off track to meet the End TB Strategy milestone of cutting deaths by 75 per cent between 2015 and 2025. The agency pointed to new shorter treatment regimens and expanded use of preventive therapy as reasons for cautious optimism. It urged governments to increase domestic financing ahead of the next UN review of tuberculosis targets.