Top United Nations officials are warning about an alarming surge in cases of tuberculosis (TB). The disease which is transmitted through the air is now killing more people worldwide than COVID-19 or AIDS. High number of cases are being found in conflict zones like Ukraine and Sudan and it is proving difficult to track down people with the disease and diagnose new sufferers.
TB is currently the biggest infectious killer disease in the world today. Associated Press quoted Dr Lucica Ditiu to say that TB is taking lives of around 4400 people every day, including 700 children. Dr Ditiu is executive director of Stop TB Partnership. She was preparing for a high-level meeting in state September during gathering of world leaders at UN General Assembly.
Before COVID-19, which like TB is transmitted through the air, “we didn’t see very dramatic cases of TB,” she said, “but after COVID we saw a type of TB that we saw in … movies in which people spit blood and they are very weak, and so on.”
She was quoted by Associated Press.
Ditiu said the economic impact of COVID and conflicts, first and foremost in Ukraine but now also in Sudan, are having “a huge impact” on efforts to treat people with TB and diagnose new cases.
Ukraine has the highest number of estimated people with TB in the European region — 34,000 — and also a high number with drug-resistant TB, she said at a news conference last week.
“It’s remarkable, the fact that the Ukrainian people are actually showing an amazing resilience in doing their best to maintain the services for TB,” Ditiu said. “But obviously a lot of people left the country.”
She added that major efforts have been made to track down patients.
In Sudan, 18,000 people received treatment for tuberculosis in 2021, according to the Stop TB Partnership, which is managed by the UN Office for Project Services and aims to achieve a world free of tuberculosis.
But Ditiu said the situation there for TB sufferers, because of the ongoing fighting and collapse of most of the health system, is “probably like a ticking bomb.”
She noted how fast a COVID-19 vaccine was developed, in less than a year, and lamented that it has taken 19 years to get three or four vaccines for TB to phase 3 trials because of a lack of money.
“Very often, unfortunately, TB is very forgotten,” she said, because “it affects usually people in the low-income countries with a lot of vulnerabilities.”
(With inputs from agencies)
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