The World Health Organization's (WHO) 2023 global TB report revealed that 7.5 million people across the globe were diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) in 2022, the highest number since records began in 1995.
Data included 192 countries
According to the research, which included data from 192 countries and areas, the massive increase in number is due to good recovery in access to and supply of health care in many countries. Following the setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it highlighted a strong global recovery in the scale-up of TB diagnosis and treatment services in 2022. It also urged for increased efforts to meet new targets.
Following the report, countries including India, Indonesia and the Philippines, together accounted for over 60 per cent of the global reductions in the number of people newly diagnosed with TB in 2020 and 2021, all recovered to beyond 2019 levels in 2022.
According to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, "For millennia, our ancestors suffered and died with tuberculosis, without knowing what it was, what caused it, or how to stop it. We now have knowledge and tools that they could only have imagined. We have political commitment, and we have an opportunity that no generation in the history of humanity has had: to write the final chapter in the chronicle of tuberculosis."
Global TB data
In 2022, worldwide, approximately 10.6 million people suffered from TB; the number spiked from 10.3 million in 2021. Also, in 2022, geographically numerous people who developed TB were in the WHO Regions of Southeast Asia (46 per cent), Africa (23 per cent) and the Western Pacific (18 per cent), with less numbers in the Eastern Mediterranean (8.1 per cent), the Americas (3.1 per cent) and Europe (2.2 per cent).
In 2022, the total number of TB-related deaths (including those among HIV-positive people) was 1.3 million, down from 1.4 million in 2021. However, COVID-19 disruptions resulted in almost 500,000 extra TB deaths between 2020 and 2022. TB tops the list of deaths among HIV-positive patients. Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) remains a public health emergency. While an estimated 410,000 individuals developed multidrug-resistant or rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis (MDR/RR-TB) in 2022, only around two out of every five received treatment.
Between 2015-22 TB-related deaths decrease
Researchers witnessed growth in developing the latest TB diagnostics, drugs and vaccinations. However, this is limited by the overall level of investment in these areas. Despite a strong recovery in 2022, progress was insufficient to reach global TB targets set in 2018, with pandemic interruptions and current conflicts playing critical roles.
The net decrease in TB-related deaths from 2015 to 2022 was 19 per cent, falling far short of the WHO End TB Strategy milestone of a 75 per cent reduction by 2025. About 50 per cent of TB patients and their households face catastrophic total costs (direct medical expenditures, non-medical expenditures and indirect costs such as income losses that amount to more than 20 per cent of total household income), far from the WHO End TB Strategy target of zero.
WHO aims
The new targets include reaching 90 per cent of people in need of TB prevention and care services; using a WHO-recommended rapid test as the first method of diagnosing TB; providing a health and social benefits package to all people with TB; ensuring the availability of at least one new TB vaccine that is safe and effective; and closing funding gaps for TB implementation and research by 2027.
(With IANS inputs)
