In the 1980s, many thought tuberculosis was on the path to elimination. In reality, more were dying from the disease than ever.

In the late 1980s, many thought the fight against tuberculosis (TB) had been won. A disease that had plagued humans for at least 9000 years was on the path to being eliminated. The world knew what caused it, how to screen for it, and finally had effective antibiotics to treat it.

By the mid-20th century, tuberculosis in the United States and Europe had already declined thanks to improved nutrition and living conditions. Once treatments arrived in the 1950s, deaths tumbled: by the late 1980s, they had fallen by over 90% in the United States. The United States was so confident that tuberculosis would gradually disappear that the US Congress stopped direct government funding for TB programs in 1972.

You have to know the history of tuberculosis to fully appreciate what a victory that would be. The disease, which spreads from person to person via water droplets, was once one of the biggest killers in many parts of the world. Without treatment, getting it was practically a death sentence. It was responsible for as much as one-quarter of deaths in the United States and Europe during parts of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Go back to 1750s London, and 1% of the population were dying from tuberculosis every year.

Fast-forward to the 1980s, and just when TB seemed to be on its way out in the United States, there was a bump in the number of cases and the number of deaths. You can see this rise in the second half of the 1980s in the chart below.

...read more at ourworldindata.org