Despite being a curable disease tuberculosis (TB), still claims the lives of 4,500 people every day.  TB is an airborne bacteria and if not treated, each person with active TB infects on average 10 to 15 people every year.

Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) is a form of TB that is difficult and expensive to treat and fails to respond to standard first-line drugs. The WHO estimates that there are 400,000 new cases of MDR-TB per year, posing a growing and severe risk to people’s lives around the world.

Eli Lilly and Company, in 2003, formed the Lilly MDR-TB Partnership, a public-private partnership to address the expanding global crisis of MDR-TB. The Partnership involves private and public healthcare professionals, academia, international organizations and producers of medicines in resource constrained countries.

TB is much more than a medical problem; equally, it is a social and economic challenge. Hence, the Partnership tackles TB in all its forms from all possible angles. It does this by providing access to medicines, transferring manufacturing technology to the developing world, training healthcare workers, raising awareness and promoting research and prevention, while providing support for patients and communities. To date Lilly has committed 135 million (dollars) to the Partnership.

In 2009 Eli Lilly commissioned photographers in four countries hardest hit by MDR-TB, China, India, Russia and South Africa, to capture different aspects of tuberculosis in their country. The aim of exhibition ‘Faces of TB' is to personalize and put a human face to the daunting challenge of combating TB and MDR-TB. The project is strictly humanitarian and was undertaken without any commercial interest.  Each photographer was artistically independent and free to capture through his/her artistic lenses the spirit of what it is like to be living with TB/MDR-TB in their country.