SAFRICA-HEALTH-DISEASE-TB-DRUGS

TB patients rest in the garden of Ward 16, where the drug-resistant tuberculosis patients are housed and treated, on August 5, 2019, at the Sizwe Tropical Diseases Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa, - A new treatment was approved on August 14, 2019 by the US Food and Drug Administration. It cures highly drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis and drastically shorten the treatment period. The announcement was especially welcomed in South Africa, one of the countries with the highest number of TB cases. Of the more than 1.6 million TB deaths recorded every year, more than 75,000 are in South Africa alone. In 2017, South Africa recorded more than 322,000 active TB cases. (Photo by Michele Spatari / AFP) (Photo credit should read MICHELE SPATARI/AFP via Getty Images)