Nilesh Patil, a 26-year-old man from Mumbai, India, was shocked to find out that he had tuberculosis. Despite the fact that he and his family cooperated well with treatment, two months later Nilesh had meningitis in his brain because he had a string of tuberculosis that was resistant to a number of different drugs.

Taking medicine while you have TB is important, but “many suffering from TB discontinue the medicines once they feel better”, said Dr. Om Shrivastav. “But in TB it gives the bacteria the chance to mutate and become drug-resistant”. Dr. Amita Athavale said that many people also stop taking the medications because of the side effects like abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting.

However, the Stop TB Partnership met this week in Washington, DC to track their progress in the commitment they made in 2001 to stop tuberculosis. Despite the good work done by the organization, TB continues to be one of the top causes of death, killing 1.7 million people in 2009 alone.

In India, which has 20% of the world’s TB cases, treatment success rates have more than tripled from 25% to 86% due to the efforts of the Stop TB Partnership, and deaths from TB have gone down from 29% to only 4%, saving around 1.7 million lives.