Hundreds of people in England have died before doctors diagnosed their tuberculosis

Researchers at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine found that 574 people in England were diagnosed with tuberculosis only after they had died, between 2010 and 2022 — almost one person a week. According to the study, the risk of a too-late diagnosis rose sharply with age and was higher among men, UK-born people and those diagnosed outside London, often because TB's symptoms mimic cancer or chronic lung disease. The median gap between symptoms starting and diagnosis was seventy-two days in 2024, time during which an infectious person can keep spreading the disease. England's TB rate climbed to nine point four per hundred thousand people that year, its largest annual rise since nineteen seventy-one, edging the country toward losing its low-incidence status.

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