Controversies, Unresolved Issues, and Needs

control is ‘‘to halt the spread of TB by 2015 and begin to reverse the worldwide incidence’ ’ [1]. The Stop TB Partnership targets include the following: (1) by 2015, reduce the global burden (prevalence and death rates) of tuberculosis by 50 % relative to the global burden in 1990 (prevalence,,150/100 000 population; deaths,,15/100 000/y) and (2) by 2050, eliminate tuberculosis as a health threat (defined as a global tu-berculosis incidence of,1 case/1 million population/y) [2, 3]. However, despite being declared a global emer-gency by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1995 and ensuing major initiatives during the past 15 years [4], the global burden of tuberculosis, despite declining incidence, is higher today than at any other time in history