COVID-19 pandemic threatens to unwind gains made in recent years: WHO chief
Geneva:
The novel coronavirus pandemic threatens to reverse progress towards eliminating tuberculosis, so far the world‘s leading killer of infectious diseases, the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday.
Countries hard hit by TB like India and South Africa have seen resources typically allocated to TB diagnosis and treatment diverted to fighting the coronavirus, the WHO said.
The report estimates that tuberculosis could cause between 200,000 and 400,000 more deaths this year than the 1.4 million last year, although cures exist.
“The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to unwind the gains made in recent years,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“The impact of the pandemic on tuberculosis control services has been severe. Data collected by WHO from countries with a high tuberculosis burden show a sharp drop in tuberculosis notifications in 2020,” he said. he declares.
In India alone, weekly and monthly notifications fell 50% from late March to late April following a lockdown in the country, which has the highest number of cases in the world, according to the report.
A similar trend, he said, was seen in South Africa between March and June.
Aid group Médecins Sans Frontières said it was “disheartening” that governments around the world are not on track to meet targets for TB testing and treatment.
“With COVID-19 causing a rollback on tuberculosis testing, governments must come up with a catch-up plan. It’s time to find excuses, ”said Sharonan Lynch, the group’s TB policy advisor.
Beyond the lockdown, which makes patient care difficult, the WHO has said the Covid-19 pandemic is also attracting medical staff as well as financial and technical resources.
Already in early May, the WHO tuberculosis control department estimated that a three-month lockdown could lead to six million new infections and 1.4 million additional tuberculosis deaths between 2020 and 2025.
End of a dream?
Tuberculosis is caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which affects the lungs and is spread when sick people expel bacteria into the air, for example by coughing.
When a person is healthy, the infection often has no symptoms because the immune system “traps” the bacillus, the WHO said.
When people have TB, symptoms include coughing, often with blood in the sputum, chest pain, weight loss, and sweating at night.
Tuberculosis can be treated with antibiotics for several months, and the WHO estimates that diagnosis and treatment saved 58 million people between 2000 and 2018.
So far, the number one killer infectious disease, tuberculosis is also among the top ten causes of death worldwide, not least because symptoms can go hidden for months.
Although tuberculosis is global, more than 95 percent of cases and deaths occur in developing countries.
In 2019, 44% of cases were recorded in Southeast Asia, 25% in Africa, 18% in the Western Pacific and 8.2% in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Americas accounted for 2.9 percent and Europe 2.5 percent.
But eight countries accounted for two-thirds of the new cases: India, Indonesia, China, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and South Africa.
Only 78 countries were on-line before the pandemic to meet targets for reducing the number of cases by 2020.
The disease infected some 10 million more people last year, a slight decrease from previous years, the WHO said.
Last year, around 1.4 million died, including 208,000 infected with HIV, which also marks a drop.
WHO said the cuts were still not fast enough to meet the targets set for the end of 2020 as part of a strategy to end TB by 2030.
At least 1,087,513 people have died from the coronavirus since it appeared in China at the end of 2019, according to an AFP count on Wednesday.
At least 38.2 million cases have been recorded worldwide.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
