By Mario Raviglione
Director, Stop TB Department, World Health Organization

Lungs and x-rays, smiles and tears, the elderly and the young - all have been used by WHO recently to portray tuberculosis. Sometimes the aim is to shock, sometimes to encourage action and support, but in all cases the goal is to ensure that this disease must not be ignored.

In 2003, in the midst of the ebola and SARS outbreaks, I commissioned the production of a report on tuberculosis to one of the world's most influential creative agencies. Could Fabrica, responsible for uncompromising communication campaigns of the 1990s, also turn the spotlight on tuberculosis to bring it out of the shadows?

The final product was a WHO report with photographs that forced the viewer to confront tuberculosis. This was its intention from the beginning - to show the face of tuberculosis like never before - to jolt the senses of the oblivious. Page after page, stricken individuals were featured on the edge of life and death.

In 2007, that same theme was revisited by the acclaimed war photographer James Nachtwey at an exhibition organised by WHO and partners at the United Nations in New York. More than 100,000 members of the public stared into the black and white images of tuberculosis health workers treating the sick and attempting, in any way they can, to prevent them from dying.

This year, we seek again to bring to life the impact of tuberculosis through the camera lens in a new photojournalism publication 'AIRBORNE' by the acclaimed health reporter, John Donnelly, and photographer Dominic Chavez.

I remain fully committed to using controversial images to show not just the suffering, but also the urgency around the need for action to save lives of those stricken by tuberculosis. Every person who dies from tuberculosis is a victim of neglect by a world that does not care enough. It is this indifference that truly shocks me. Tuberculosis is preventable. It is curable. As the New York Times reminded its readers in its review of the UN "…his pictures, devised to confront and move people into action, are finally about us, and our concern or lack of it".