The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday released the Global TB report and it revealed that although the tuberculosis response is recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerated efforts are needed to meet new targets.
According to the report, India accounted for the highest number of tuberculosis (TB) cases in the world in 2022, making up 27 percent of the global burden. The report also revealed that among the top eight high-burden countries, India was at the forefront with 2.8 million TB cases in 2022, with a case-fatality ratio of 12 percent.
WHO estimated that the number of deaths in India due to TB was approximately 342,000, with a majority occurring among HIV-negative individuals.
Other high burden countries in the list included Indonesia (10 percent), China (7.1 percent), the Philippines (7.0 percent), Pakistan (5.7 percent), Nigeria (4.5 percent), Bangladesh (3.6 percent), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (3.0 percent). Notably, India also recorded 1.1 lakh cases of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) in 2022.
The Global Health Agency is attributing the increase in TB cases to good recovery in access to and provision of health services in many countries. It is noteworthy that India, Indonesia and the Philippines, which together accounted for over 60 percent of the global reductions in the number of people newly diagnosed with TB in 2020 and 2021, all recovered to beyond 2019 levels in 2022.
“For millennia, our ancestors suffered and died with tuberculosis, without knowing what it was, what caused it, or how to stop it,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Today, we have knowledge and tools they could only have dreamed of. We have political commitment, and we have an opportunity that no generation in the history of humanity has had: the opportunity to write the final chapter in the story of TB.”
An estimated 10.6 million people fell ill with TB in 2022, up from 10.3 million in 2021 globally. Geographically, in 2022, most people who developed TB were in the WHO Regions of South-East Asia (46%), Africa (23%) and the Western Pacific (18%), with smaller proportions in the Eastern Mediterranean (8.1%), the Americas (3.1%) and Europe (2.2%).
The total number of TB-related deaths (including those among people with HIV) was 1.3 million in 2022, down from 1.4 million in 2021. However, during the 2020-2022 period, COVID-19 disruptions resulted in nearly half a million more deaths from TB. TB continues to be the leading killer among people with HIV.
Meanwhile, multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) continues to be a public health crisis. While an estimated 410 000 people developed multidrug-resistant or rifampicin-resistant TB (MDR/RR-TB) in 2022, only about two in five people accessed treatment.
There is some progress in the development of new TB diagnostics, drugs and vaccines. However, this is constrained by the overall level of investment in these areas, it added.
