COVID-19 pandemic resulted in major setbacks in the global fight against TB
The shifting of a major proportion of healthcare resources (human financial and others) from tackling TB to responding to COVID-19 resulted in huge shortfalls in targets in 2020 in the global fight against the disease, which is set to continue in 2021 and 2022, according to the latest annual ‘Global Tuberculosis Report 2021’, published by WHO.
In many countries, including India, human, financial and other resources had been reallocated from tackling tuberculosis (TB) to the COVID-19 response, limiting the availability of essential services. People had also struggled to seek care in the context of lockdowns.
These two reasons have reversed years of global progress in tackling TB. The year 2020 produced grim statistics in the world’s fight against TB, as per the ‘Global Tuberculosis Report 2021’, released by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
While the targets for reduction in TB incidence and reduction in TB deaths for the period 2015-20 were 20 per cent and 35 per cent, respectively, what was achieved were just 11 per cent and 9.2 per cent, that is, about half and one-fourth of the targets set.
Thus, progress achieved up to 2019 in decreasing deaths due to TB (a 14 per cent reduction from 2015 to 2019 and a 41 per cent reduction from 2000 to 2019) was compromised by the increase in TB deaths in 2020.
Another significant fact is that while the target for reducing the percentage of people facing catastrophic treatment costs by 2020 was zero, a whopping 47 per cent were still facing the same.
According to the report, among the 16 countries with the largest contributions (93 per cent) to the global shortfall in TB notifications (that is, finding out people affected by TB) in 2020, compared with 2019, India was by far the largest contributor, with a 41 per cent fall.
As a result of the global shortfall in TB notifications, the gap between the number of people who fell ill with TB and the number of people newly diagnosed and reported widened substantially in 2020, to an estimated 4.1 million.
Reduced access to TB diagnosis and treatment have increased TB deaths. The best estimate for 2020 is 1.514 million (total of deaths among HIV-negative and HIV-positive people), taking the world back to the level of 2017.
All the above impacts are forecast to be much worse in 2021 and 2022. Therefore, “[a]ctions to mitigate and reverse these impacts are urgently required,” says the report, with the immediate priority being to restore access to TB services (diagnosis, treatment) so that levels can recover to at least the 2019 levels.
