This year’s Global Report on TB was published last week by the WHO. It’s become a custom for us to comment on it on each occasion. First of all, we immediately recognise that in the 26 years since TB was first declared a Global Emergency (and indeed in each of the years since when we have been commenting on them) these reports have improved immeasurably. Now, for instance, they appear replete with data with which they were appallingly deficient in their earlier editions. But

“Extrapulmonary TB represented 14% of the 6.4 million incident cases that were notified in 2017, ranging from 8% in the WHO Western Pacific Region to 24% in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region.”[i] This is a direct quote from the last WHO Global TB Report (and another one is due very soon). They published a helpful map to illustrate this identifying where the highest proportions of extrapulmonary TB (EPTB) are known to exist. It’s a revealing one. You’ll see immediately that,