• BLOG SURF
March 24 is World TB Day, it's timely to remember that 10 million people developed TB and 1.5 million died from TB in 2020 - the latest available data. Much progress has been made during the last decade in reducing TB incidence and deaths with many high-TB burden countries were on track to reach the 2025 TB milestones.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has threatened to reverse this progress.
For example, in 2020, of the 10 million new TB cases, only 5.8 million cases were diagnosed and notified, reflecting an 18-percent decrease from 2019. Even more concerning, we saw for the first time rising TB deaths with 1.5 million people dying, an increase of 100,000 cases compared to 2019. Limited access to care and treatment, including preventive treatment and treatment of multidrug resistant TB likely accelerates TB transmission rates. The WB study conducted in Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Mozambique, and Peru found that the pandemic's effects on TB incidence and mortality will likely be exacerbated in the medium and long term. - blog.wb.org/blog
A version of this article appears in the print on March 25, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
