Global investments in TB control: economic benefits

The Global Plan to Stop TB calls for significant financial resources to meet the Millennium Development Goals for tuberculosis. However, it is unclear whether the economic benefits of TB control exceed the costs. Using an epidemiological model, we find that the economic benefits of the Global Plan relative to sustained DOTS (a commonly used treatment method) were unambiguously greater than the incremental costs in all nine high-burden countries in Africa and in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Russia. Benefit-cost ratios of sustaining DOTS at current levels relative to having no DOTS exceeded 1 in all twenty-two high-burden, TB-endemic countries and sub-Saharan Africa.