Millions still die from TB

A radiographer interpreting a patient’s scans at the Kaneshie Polyclinic in Accra. — ©2023 The New York Times Company

AT Kaneshie Polyclinic, a health centre in a hardscrabble neighbourhood of Accra, the capital of Ghana, there is a rule. Every patient who walks through the door – a woman in labour, a construction worker with an injury, a child with malaria – is screened for tuberculosis.

This policy, a national one, is meant to address a tragic problem: two-thirds of the people in the country with tuberculosis don’t know they have it.