A doctor examines a X-ray picture of a tuberculosis patient in a district TB center
| Photo Credit: AP
India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, which collectively accounted for a large share of the global reductions in the number of people newly diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) in 2020 and 2021, all recovered to above 2019 levels in 2022, notes the latest World Health Organization TB report, 2024, released on Tuesday (October 29, 2024).
It added that COVID-19 related disruptions are estimated to have resulted in almost half a million excess deaths from TB in the three years 2020–2022, compared with the number that would have occurred if pre-pandemic trends had been maintained.
Also read: 7.5 million new cases of TB in 2022: WHO report
Thirty high TB burden countries accounted for 87% of the world’s TB cases in 2022 and two-thirds of the global total was in eight countries including India (27%), Indonesia (10%), China (7.1%), the Philippines (7.0%), and Pakistan (5.7%) among others.
In 2022, 55% of people who developed TB were men, 33% were women and 12% were children (aged 0–14 years).
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India, released its TB Report 2024, which highlighted that the mortality rate due to the infection declined from 28 per lakh population in 2015 to 23 per lakh population in 2022. The estimated incidence of TB in 2023 increased slightly to 27.8 lakh from the previous year’s estimate of 27.4 lakh.
Meanwhile, the WHO report, which provides a comprehensive assessment of the TB epidemic at global, regional and country level, states that globally in 2022, TB caused an estimated 1.30 million deaths. This was down from best estimates of 1.4 million in both 2020 and 2021 and almost back to the level of 2019. In 2022, TB was the world’s second leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, after coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and caused almost twice as many deaths as HIV/AIDS, notes the report.
TB is caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is spread when people who are sick with TB expel bacteria into the air (e.g. by coughing). About a quarter of the global population is estimated to have been infected with TB. Following infection, the risk of developing TB disease is highest in the first two years (approximately 5%), after which it is much lower. Of the total number of people who develop TB disease each year, about 90% are adults, with more cases among men than women. The disease typically affects the lungs (pulmonary TB) but can affect other sites as well.
“There was a major global recovery in the number of people diagnosed with TB and treated in 2022, after two years of COVID-related disruptions. This has started to reverse or moderate the damaging impact of the pandemic on the number of people dying from or falling ill with TB,’’ the report states.
It adds that the global number of people newly diagnosed with TB was 7.5 million in 2022. This is the highest number since WHO began global TB monitoring in 1995, above the pre-COVID baseline (and previous historical peak) of 7.1 million in 2019, and up from 5.8 million in 2020 and 6.4 million in 2021.
It highlights that the number in 2022 probably includes a sizable backlog of people who developed TB in previous years, but whose diagnosis and treatment was delayed by COVID-related disruptions that affected access to and provision of health services.
Additionally, the net reduction in the global number of deaths caused by TB from 2015 to 2022 was 19%, which it noted is far from the WHO End TB Strategy milestone of a 75% reduction by 2025.
The global gap between the estimated number of people developing TB (incident cases) and the reported number of people newly diagnosed with TB (notified cases) narrowed to a best estimate of 3.1 million in 2022, down from around four million in both 2020 and 2021 and back to the pre-pandemic level of 2019, the report said.
Published – October 29, 2024 10:45 pm IST
