WHO Appeals To Reverse Gains Lost In Fight Against TB

WHO Appeals To Reverse Gains Lost In Fight Against TB

World Health Organisation (WHO) has called for urgent investment in the fight against tuberculosis to save millions more lives in its message to mark World Tuberculosis (TB) Day.

World TB Day, observed on March 24 each year, is designed to build public awareness about the global epidemic of tuberculosis and efforts to eliminate the disease.

Although TB is preventable and curable, it remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious killers, according to WHO.

Each day, it claims more than 4,100 lives, and close to 28,000 people fall ill after becoming infected – and this, despite the fact that 66 million lives have been saved since 2,000.

The UN health agency pointed out that global spending on TB diagnostics, treatments and prevention in 2020 was less than half the annual global target of 13 billion dollars.

For research and development, an extra 1.1 billion dollars per year is needed.

“Urgent investments are needed to develop and expand access to the most innovative services and tools to prevent, detect and treat TB that could save millions of lives each year, narrow inequities and avert huge economic losses,” WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus said.

“These investments offer huge returns for countries and donors, in averted health care costs and increased productivity.”

The need for global action is more urgent than ever, the WHO said, as the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years of progress in preventing TB transmission, meaning that for the first time in over a decade, tuberculosis deaths increased in 2020.

Conflicts across Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East, have made vulnerable populations more susceptible to TB, underscoring the need to ensure that commitments made by global leaders to end TB are met.

“Investments in TB programmes have demonstrated benefits not just for people with TB but for health systems and pandemic preparedness,” WHO said.

“Building on lessons learnt from COVID-19 research, there is a need to catalyse investment and action to accelerate the development of new tools, especially new TB vaccines.”

Progress towards reaching current TB targets including the WHO Director-General’s “Find.Treat.All”, is at risk mainly from a lack of funding.

Between 2018 and 2020, 20 million people received TB treatment. This is halfway to the five-year target which ends in 2022.

During the same period, 8.7 million people received TB preventive treatment. This is only 29 per cent of the target of reaching 30 million from 2018 to 2022.

The situation is even worse for children and adolescents with TB, WHO warned.

In 2020, an estimated 63 per cent of children and young adolescents with TB were not reached, or not officially reported to have accessed life-saving TB diagnosis and treatment services.

The proportion was even higher (72 per cent) for under fives, according to the UN health agency, which said that almost two-thirds of eligible children under five did not receive TB preventive treatment and therefore remain at risk of falling sick. (NAN)