WHO's Global Tuberculosis Report provides a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the TB epidemic and of progress in care and prevention at global, regional and country levels. This is done in the context of recommended global TB strategies and associated targets, and broader development goals. For the period 2016-2035, these are WHO's End TB Strategy and the United Nations' (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which share a common aim: to end the global TB epidemic.

The main data sources for the report are annual rounds of global TB data collection implemented by WHO's Global TB Program since 1995 and databases maintained by other WHO departments, UNAIDS and the World Bank. In WHO's 2017 round of global TB data collection, 201 countries and territories that account for over 99% of the world's population and TB cases reported data.