In the Global Tuberculosis Report 2022, new data from the World Health Organization revealed that TB incidence increased in 2021 for the first time in nearly two decades and that fatalities subsequently rose too. The Stop TB Partnership expressed alarm over an increasingly terrible scenario and the effects it will have on individuals, health care systems, and economies as a result of this, which includes 4,400 people dying every day.
The Stop TB Partnership exhorts the global community to recognise the threat to public health posed by an airborne illness with drug-resistant strains that is increasing in mortality and frequency and to act right away by making the critical financial investments required to fight TB.
The number of new cases of TB per 100,000 people per year increased by 3.6% between 2020 and 2021, reversing annual decreases of roughly 2% for most of the previous two decades.
Throughout 2019 and 2021, the expected number of TB deaths climbed globally, reversing a 14-year reduction that occurred between 2005 and 2019. 1.6 million people died from TB in 2021, including 187, 000 HIV-positive individuals. From 2018 to 2021, 26.3 million patients received TB treatment. The 40 million targets for the period of 2018–2022, set at the UN High-Level Meeting on TB in 2018, are a far cry from the current figure.
It has become very evident that people now have a very serious scenario on their hands with an airborne illness that is entirely disregarded, and which has been permitted to run uncontrolled over the past two years, said the executive director of the Stop TB Partnership, Dr. Lucica Ditiu. A higher risk of death has resulted from increased transmission and longer periods during which infections were undetected and untreated, which allowed tuberculosis to dwell and progress into more severe forms of the illness.
Every single person should be outraged and insist that their authorities and decision-makers take action right away because everyone is now at risk, she continued, and the World Health Organization study states this in black and white.
According to the most recent data in the report, TB is expected to overtake COVID-19 as the most lethal infectious disease worldwide. In actuality, this avoidable, treatable, and curable disease claims the lives of 4,400 people daily, or three people every minute.
The report did include some positive information. During the epidemic, TB treatment success rates remained stable, especially in Africa.