South Africa is taking great strides against TB but is being held back by poverty and inequality. While it has a high cure rate and the world's best testing systems, the country also has the world's highest infection rate, says the World Health Organisation 2016 Global TB report released yesterday.Smoking, bad ventilation, poor nutrition, diabetes, HIV and crowding in schools were blamed by experts.The National Institute of Communicable Diseases' Nazir Ismail said: "Stigma is a major issue and patients present late or don't end up on TB treatment. TB is highly transmissible through the air, especially in poverty-stricken and overcrowded conditions."It is made worse when patients with TB, who are not on treatment, live in these areas and continue to spread the disease."Communities need to play a bigger role in helping people access care and complete treatment."An estimated half-a-million South Africans contract TB every year but the world TB report said it was estimated that only 60% of cases were treated.The country's cure rate for ordinary TB has risen to its record high of 78%.The report noted South Africa's progress:- It and Russia account for the highest use of bedaquiline, the first new TB drug in 60 years that is used to treat drug-resistant TB cases;- The National Institute for Communicable Diseases was chosen as a special laboratory to join the WHO team to improve surveillance, testing and management of the disease globally;- South Africa has the highest number of at-risk HIV-positive people (409 000 of the 910 000 worldwide) on TB-preventive therapy;- About 45% of 6.2million testing cartridges used globally for hi-tech testing come to South Africa; and- Most funding is raised locally.In addition to the high infection rate of 834 people in 100 000, South Africa reportedly has the second-highest number of healthcare workers contracting TB, after China (about 1800 in 2015). Doctors and nurses are at high risk in their jobs.Professor Robin Woods, head of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation at the University of Cape Town, has previously said that South Africa could not treat its "way out of the TB epidemic" as the Western world did. He said Western Cape township children were likely to contract TB in badly ventilated and crowded classrooms.Woods argued that socioeconomic conditions, poverty and better ventilation in schools and clinics needed attention to reduce the epidemic...