Coronavirus pandemic caused rise in TB deaths: WHO report

The World Health Organisation released a new report highlighting how global progress achieved in tackling the preventable disease of Tuberculosis through years witnessed reversal due to the pandemic hit, overwhelmed health care systems in 2020. The United Nations Health Agency’s new report titled ‘2021 Global TB report’ said that the pandemic along with the lockdowns hindered people’s access to essential health care services, which made it almost impossible for people to get diagnosed and receive adequate treatment for TB.

According to the report, people newly diagnosed people with the disease fell from 7.1 million in 2019 to 5.8 million in 2020, implying that far fewer people were diagnosed, treated or provided with TB preventive treatment compared with 2019. After assessing the trends in 197 countries during the pandemic, it found that in the year 2020, around 1.5 million people died from TB in 2020, which is more than the number of deaths reported in 2019. Additionally, there has been a reduction in provision of TB preventative treatment worldwide, and the number of people treated for drug-resistant TB fell by 15 per cent, from 177,000 in 2019 to 150,000 in 2020, equivalent to only about one in three of those in need.