Thanks Erica. Yes tuberculosis is one of the major killers on the continent. South Africa is one of the countries with the highest burden of the disease. TB kills more people in the southern African nation than HIV/AIDS. But as CGTN's Yolisa Njamela reports, healthcare officials are determined to change the statistics.

TB is South Africa's leading cause of death. It has been made much worse by the HIV epidemic. For instance, Statistics South Africa asserts that over 80% of people who died of TB in 2016 were also infected with HIV.

PHUMLANI XIMIYA, NATIONAL TB CONTROL PROGRAMME, SOUTH AFRICA "The fact that we are a high burden country is nothing new. We are part of the 22 high body countries globally that contribute to 80% to burden of the global level and South Africa is ranked number 6 out of those 22 high body countries and it's not only TB, we are we are a high burdened HIV country and therefore it requires then of a government to mount a response that is concomitant with the challenges that we are faced with as a country."

People with damaged immune systems are at much greater risk of becoming ill with TB.

YOLISA NJAMELA, PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA "According to the World Health Organisation - TB is still the world's deadliest infection despite the fact that the disease is preventable and curable. The World Health Organization's latest Global TB Report indicates that the disease still claims 4,000 lives every day globally."

The South African government and organisations like the South African National Tuberculosis Association have worked tirelessly to combat TB but the disease persists.

PHUMLANI XIMIYA, NATIONAL TB CONTROL PROGRAMME, SOUTH AFRICA "South Africa has responded to all these issues first by expanding access to treatment engaging in a far smarter technology and also looking at policies that are very enabling for us to kind of mount a response to the challenge faced by TB, I mean posed onto the country by TB."

Ximiya says they're starting to see results based on the interventions.

PHUMLANI XIMIYA, NATIONAL TB CONTROL PROGRAMME, SOUTH AFRICA "We have actually kind of made significant strides. As I said that the introduction of the short drug regiment, the decentralization to an extent that our treatment success for drug on tuberculosis has kind of gone beyond 40% and for that reason, I am of the opinion that South Africa is one of the leading countries in the management of drugs on tuberculosis at a global level and the results speak for themselves."

Estimates indicate that a substantial percentage of patients who receive a positive TB diagnosis don't take their treatment. Finding these missing patients is vital in the battle to end TB.

PHUMLANI XIMIYA, NATIONAL TB CONTROL PROGRAMME, SOUTH AFRICA "There are missing patients in that first and foremost there are people like me who've never had TB before who have latent TB because about 80% of the global community has got latent TB. What actually happens is that people have got latent TB and they do not go for treatment and they contract TB and they don't know that they contracted TB which is actually infectious and one infectious individual can infect 15 to 22 people per annum with undiagnosed tuberculosis."

While the picture still looks gloomy, health officials are convinced they will win the fight against this scourge. Yolisa Njamela, CGTN, Pretoria, South Africa.