This special section of Health and Human Rights Journal focuses much-needed attention on tuberculosis (TB) and human rights—particularly the right to health. Even as TB has surpassed HIV as the top infectious disease killer in the world and the global threat from multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) continues to grow, approaches to fighting the disease remain primarily biomedical and public health-based.1 These traditional approaches dominate global and national TB programs and research on the disease, and they largely ignore the underlying social, economic, and structural factors driving the epidemic and drug resistance. All the while, the highest TB burdens exist where vulnerability and marginalization increase the risk of infection and disease and erect barriers to accessing testing and treatment services.
The six papers and two perspectives in this special section cover diverse topics and concerns related to TB and the right to health, with a broad geographic scope. Nonetheless, key issues and themes emerge and cut across multiple papers. These include:
- the lack of adequate research and development of health technologies for TB and the right to benefit from scientific progress;
- imprisonment and compulsory treatment of people with TB;
- human rights-based approaches to TB in advocacy, litigation, and assessment strategies; and
- accountability and the human rights obligations of governments and international organizations to prevent and treat TB.