Treatment success is an indicator of the performance of national tuberculosis control programme. In addition to the obvious benefit to individual patients, successful treatment of infectious cases of TB is essential to prevent the spread of the infection. Detecting and successfully treating a large proportion of TB cases should have an immediate impact on TB prevalence and mortality. By reducing transmission, successfully treating the majority of cases will also affect, with some delay, the incidence of disease. MDG indicator 24 (under Goal 6, Target 8) is the "proportion of tuberculosis cases detected and cured under DOTS". The Stop TB Partnership has endorsed the targets, linked to the MDGs, to diagnose at least 70% of people with sputum smear-positive TB (i.e. under the DOTS strategy), and cure at least 85%, by 2005. These are targets set by the World Health Assembly of WHO. Treatment success in the 2003 DOTS cohort of 1.7 million patients was 82% on average, edging closer to the 85% target. To reach the target of 85% treatment success globally, a special effort must be made to improve cure rates in the African and European regions.