In pictures: World TB Day

A patient rests at the Group of TB Hospitals in Mumbai, India.

It is World TB Day on 24 March and photographer David Rochkind has been documenting the disease in Mumbai, India. Around the world each year more than nine million people become ill with tuberculosis (TB) and nearly two million people die.

A doctor visits a patient at the Group of TB Hospitals in Mumbai

The basic diagnosis of TB has not changed for more than a century and it can be cured with medication. The World Health Organization says some 36 million people have been cured of TB over the past 15 years through a programme called Dots.

Boxes of TB medicine sit in a cabinet at the Thakkar Bappa DOTS Centre

The Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course (Dots) strategy was introduced by the WHO in 1994 and involves a standardised multi-drug treatment therapy. Patients must take the medicine daily and each box contains the treatment regimen for one patient.

If patients break their treatment the TB bacilli become resistant. Multi-drug resistant TB can develop, which takes longer to treat and can be cured only with second-line drugs, which are more expensive and have more side effects.

Sandeep Tambe is currently taking TB medicine and is slowly beginning to feel better. He was bedridden for some time and his aunt took care of him.

At the Padel Nagar Dots centre in Mumbai, Mohammad Haroon Khan takes his daily medicine watched by Hanifa Hussain Sayed, a community health worker.

Men rest after a long day working in a tailoring shop

Migrant workers often do not have the money to rent rooms so they work and sleep in the workshop. Voluntary agency Lok Seva Sangam offers educational talks to workers like these, teaching them about the potential risk of TB in cramped living spaces.

Rhemat Shek is lies on the floor of her mother's home

Rhemat Shek (front) came to Mumbai with her husband to be closer to a Dots centre so she could receive medicine, but they say they might soon return home, interrupting treatment so he can continue to work.

A nurse dispenses daily medicine to patients

In Mumbai at the Group of TB Hospitals a patient receives his medication. This hospital has a variety of male and female wards, some with more than 50 patients.

David Rochkind was the winner of the Stop TB Partnership's 2009 Images to Stop Tuberculosis Award. This is the second year of the award and Stop TB will be calling for entries for the third competition in June.