According to the WHO’s annual report, 10.6 million people fell ill in 2021 from tuberculosis — a disease caused by a bacterium that mainly attacks the lungs — an increase of 4.5% in one year.
After years in decline, tuberculosis is booming again because of the Covid-19 pandemic and its restrictions, which have reduced testing and access to care, the World Health Organization warns, citing 1.6 million deaths worldwide last year.
According to the WHO’s annual report, 10.6 million people fell ill in 2021 from tuberculosis — a disease caused by a bacterium that mainly attacks the lungs — an increase of 4.5% in one year.
Also, the disease incidence rate (new cases per 100,000 population per year) increased by 3.6% between 2020 and 2021, after falling by almost 2% per year over the past two decades.
Regionally, the TB incidence rate increased between 2020 and 2021 everywhere in the world, except in Africa where health service disruptions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic had little impact on the number of people diagnosed with the disease.
Globally, the estimated annual number of TB deaths declined between 2005 and 2019, but estimates for 2020 and 2021 suggest that this trend has reversed.
The UN estimates the number of deaths last year at 1.6 million, a return to 2017 levels. This represents an increase of more than 14% compared to 2019, when this infectious disease killed 1.4 million people (1 .5 million in 2020).
Most of the estimated increase in deaths last year was recorded in four countries: India, Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines.
The incidence of drug-resistant TB also increased — by 3% between 2020 and 2021 — with 450,000 new cases of rifampicin-resistant TB in 2021.
Poverty and malnutrition
According to the WHO, “it is the first time in many years that an increase in TB patients, as well as drug-resistant TB, has been reported.”
The Covid-19 pandemic has greatly slowed progress in the fight against tuberculosis. The resurgence of TB actually jeopardizes the strategy put in place by the WHO, which aims to reduce deaths from the disease by 90% and the incidence rate of TB by 80% by 2030, compared to 2015.
However, the agency is not giving up hope, even as it estimates that TB will continue its upward trend in 2022.
The WHO underlines that the need for action has become even more urgent due to the context of the war in Ukraine, conflicts raging in other parts of the world, the global energy crisis and risks to food security, as these elements “are likely further exacerbate some of the important determinants of TB, such as income levels and malnutrition.”
In 2019, tuberculosis was the 13th leading cause of death worldwide and the leading cause of death from an infectious disease. As of 2020, it has become the second leading cause of death from infectious disease, after Covid-19 and ahead of AIDS, the report said.
Most people who developed TB last year were in south-east Asia (45%), Africa (23%) and the Western Pacific region (18%). Eight countries account for more than two-thirds of global cases: India, Indonesia, China, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
RES-EMP
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