The United Nations has reported that while rates of Tuberculosis are falling or stable in five of the world's six regions, the disease is still on the rise in Africa. In fact, the TB rate has tripled in Africa since 1990 and is still rising at a rate of between three percent and four percent each year. In the rest of the world, the rate of TB has declined 20 percent since 1990.

'Evidence in this report provides real optimism that TB is beatable, but it is also a clear warning,' WHO Director-General LEE Jong-wook said in a statement. 'As Nelson Mandela has said, we can't fight AIDS unless we do much more to fight TB, and it is time to match his words with urgent action in Africa on the two epidemics together.'

Dr. Lee Reichman, the director of the National Tuberculosis Center at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey told USA Today, 'If you treat an AIDS patient for TB, you prolong life for two to five years, long enough to get them on anti-retrovirals,' he says. The paradox of TB, he says, is that 'it's entirely preventable, entirely curable. We know what causes TB, we know how to treat it, we know how to prevent it, and we don't do it.'

The World Health Organization reported 1.7 million deaths from Tuberculosis worldwide in 2003. In the United States, there were just 14,511 cases last year, a 3.3 percent decline over the previous year.

The disease is under control in most of the world, but WHO officials are concerned about a drug resistant strain that has developed, especially in Russia.

Dr. Reichman says that governments are making progress in the fight against TB, 'but they've still got a long way to go.'