Nigeria is ranked seventh out of the 30 highest burden countries for tuberculosis and second in Africa. In the year 2019, an estimated 440,000 new cases occurred (of these, 46,000 were also HIV-positive) 384 Laboratory confirmed cases of MDR/DR-TB and 16 Laboratory confirmed cases of XDR TB and about 150,000 Nigerians died from tuberculosis (TB) according to WHO.
TB accounts for more than 10% of all deaths in Nigeria. Every hour, nearly 30 people die from the disease, despite effective treatments being available.
Most people can be cured of TB with a standard, inexpensive treatment. However, with XDR-TB conventional drugs do not work. Treatment is much longer (18 months) and less effective. According to the WHO, the cure rate of XDR-TB worldwide is only 57 percent as of 2020. However the new BPaL regimen (6 months, without injections) has shown a cure rate of 90 percent in clinical trials, according to Phase 3 trial results published in the New England Journal of Medicine.