Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the world’s deadliest diseases, with more than 8 million new cases each year and 1.4 million dying from the disease. The emergence and spread of TB strains that are highly resistant to standard drug treatments has become a major global health challenge. In recognition of World TB Day on Monday, March 24, the Kaiser Family Foundation convened a public forum on Tuesday, March 25 to take stock of the global health challenge presented by TB, to examine the limitations and challenges of current treatment options, and to discuss the search for new and better TB drugs and other tools.

The event began with a screening of a short segment of a new FRONTLINE television documentary, TB Silent Killer, premiering March 25 on PBS. The documentary focuses on the Southern African nation of Swaziland, the country with the world’s highest incidence of TB, and delivers a portrait of the people living at the pandemic’s epicenter. The forum then moved to a discussion with a panel of experts: Jezza Neumann, producer, writer and director of TB Silent Killer; Josh Michaud, associate director for global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation; Christine F. Sizemore, chief of the Tuberculosis, Leprosy and other Mycobacterial Diseases Section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health; and Jonathon Gass, monitoring and evaluation specialist at Ariadne Labs, who worked as an epidemiologist for Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders. Penny Duckham, executive director of the Foundation’s Media Fellowships Program, made introductory remarks and moderated the panel discussion.