The UK and Europe are sitting on a hidden “white plague” or tuberculosis crisis — with health services failing to identify or treat one in every five people who fall ill with the disease, the World Health Organisation has said.
New figures show the scale of the problem clearly. Across the WHO’s European Region in 2024, an estimated 204,000 people contracted TB. Fewer than 162,000 were ever picked up by health systems — leaving tens of thousands without diagnosis or care, and free to unknowingly pass the infection on.
“One in five people with TB in the European Region are still being missed by health services. That is not only a failure in detection — it is a missed chance to treat earlier, prevent suffering, and stop further transmission,” Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO’s Regional Director for Europe is reported to have said.
A drug resistance emergency
Bad as the detection failure is, a parallel crisis may prove even harder to contain. Published on Monday alongside the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the joint report reveals that drug-resistant TB has taken a firm hold across the continent.
Close to one in four new TB cases in Europe now involves a strain that resists standard drug treatments — a rate of 23 per cent that dwarfs the global average of 3.2 per cent, state reports. Tackling such strains demands lengthier, more complex treatment courses and carries a substantially higher death toll than ordinary TB.
Making matters worse, Europe’s follow-up systems are breaking down, the Express understands. A fifth of patients who begin treatment allegedly drop out of monitoring within a year, giving resistant strains the breathing room they need to spread.
Who faces the greatest danger
The WHO’s European Region is a broad geographic territory encompassing 53 nations — the 27 EU member states plus a sweep of eastern Europe and central Asia that includes Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan, all of which shoulder a heavy TB burden, reports The Telegraph.
Within that population, certain groups are particularly exposed. Those held in prisons face TB infection rates up to 13 times those seen in wider society. Young children — particularly those under five — are also among the most vulnerable, states the report.
The BCG vaccination programme is said to offer a degree of protection but is typically administered only to children living in areas where TB rates are highest.
What TB does and how it spreads
Unlike some infectious diseases, TB does not pass easily from person to person. It travels in airborne droplets but generally takes root only after sustained indoor contact with someone carrying the infection.
The warning signs — a cough that will not clear, chest pain, persistent tiredness and gradual weight loss — tend to creep up on sufferers and are easily missed or dismissed until the disease has progressed.
Historically the illness carried a grim nickname: the ‘white plague.’ Coined in the 18th and 19th centuries, the term captured the hollowed, bloodless appearance of those the disease consumed — a stark visual contrast to the dark marks left by bubonic plague, from which the Black Death took its name.
A decade’s ambition slipping away
The WHO had set itself a target of cutting TB cases in its European Region by 80 per cent and deaths by 90 per cent within this decade. Current progress makes that goal unreachable.
“We have made progress…but we are still not moving fast enough, and drug-resistant TB remains one of the most serious threats we face,” Dr Kluge said.
The report’s authors are pressing for earlier and more aggressive case-finding, faster treatment initiation and follow-up systems that actually hold — before the gap between ambition and reality grows any wider.