With 9.6 million new cases and 1.5 million deaths estimated in 2014, tuberculosis represents a major global health problem and ranks alongside HIV as a leading cause of infectious-disease-related deaths. Although global incidence has been falling slowly during the past decade, the number of people affected every year remains daunting. Among the most serious obstacles to successful prevention and treatment of tuberculosis are the inadequate identification of individuals with latent tuberculosis infection who are at highest risk of developing the disease, insufficient capacity of health systems to rapidly identify and diagnose all tuberculosis cases (especially those with drug resistance), inappropriate management of contacts of infectious cases, long duration of treatment (especially for drug-resistant tuberculosis), concurrent infection with HIV, and worldwide spread of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains that are resistant to the most effective antituberculosis agents.

To accelerate global progress in the control of tuberculosis, new drugs and shorter, easily administered regimens are needed to treat all forms of tuberculosis, including multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis.