Infectious Diseases

The Centenary Institute houses the largest tuberculosis (TB) research group in Australia, supported by world class facilities including the only facility in the country permitted to work with experimental tuberculosis infection.

While TB remains uncommon in Australia, the worldwide pandemic sees more than two billion people, or one third of the world's population infected with TB and 1.6 million people die from the disease each year, the vast majority in the developing world, including our Asian neighbours, where the number of tuberculosis cases is still increasing.

TB is also a leading killer in people infected with HIV, with nearly 200,000 people living with HIV/AIDS dying from tuberculosis each year.

The Centenary Institute is working across several fronts to reduce the impact of TB globally, including:

• why latent TB infection progresses to active disease;
• how to improve the control of tuberculosis in highly endemic regions which is particularly important for containing the spread of drug-resistant TB; and
• developing better vaccines.

For more information on Centenary's work on tuberculosis, visit:

• Mycobacterial Research Group and its sub-groups, Host Response to TB; and Vaccine Development and Pathogenesis.