The World Health Organization (WHO) has come up with a report titled, Global Tuberculosis Report 2024, and this report contains statistics that confirm tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of death from an infectious disease in the year 2023, overtaking also COVID-19. In the year 2023, about 8.2 million new TB cases were reported, the highest number ever since the WHO started following up the cases of TB in 1995, having increased from 7.5 million in the year 2022.
The number of deaths due to TB decreased from 1.32 million reported in the year 2022 to 1.25 million reported in the year 2023, however, the number of cases of TB reported soared, in which an estimate of 10.8 million people fell ill. This status of the illness persists with excessive related cases accounted for within 30 high-burden countries. India accounts for 26% of cases around the world, while other countries such as Indonesia, China India, the Philippines and Pakistan account for 10%, 6.8%, 6,8% and 6.3% of cases respectively. Among the recorded cases, 55% were men, women accounted for 33%, whereas children and young people made up 12% of the affected individuals. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, expressed his worries about TB saying it is still taking a heavy toll on people, “It is shocking that so many people still get ill and die of TB. This is a disease we know how to prevent, diagnose and treat.”
He appealed for action from nations to remind them of their pledges to improve the use of TB preventive and curative measures.
In the report, it is emphasized the reduction of the gap between the estimated and the reported new TB cases. For example, this difference reduced to 2.7 million number of cases in 2023 and was around 4 million degree which was recorded during the coronavirus cases in 2020 and 2021. This has been explained by the fact that the world has made efforts to recover from the effects of the epidemic. Nonetheless, multidrug resistant TB is still a serious concern to public health practice. Treatment success rates of a patient with multi drug resistant or rifampicin resistant tuberculosis (MDR/RR-TB) stands at 68 percent, however, in 2023 only 44 percent of an estimated 400,000 cases of patients who had multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR/RR-TB) were treated. Overall funding also fell in 2023, with just $5.7 billion raised against a $22 billion annual funding target for TB prevention and care, which represents only 26 percent of the overall global requirement. Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) carry 98% of the burden of TB but are greatly underfunded.
The report further points out the dire economic consequences of TB treatment, with every second household spending more than 20% of their annual income on treatment. Undernutrition, HIV, alcohol, smoking, and diabetes are major risk factors for new cases of TB and so there is a need for a multi sectoral approach in dealing with the issues.
Dr. Tereza Kasaeva, who has been serving as the Director of the Global Tuberculosis Programme of the World Health Organization, made an appeal for the importance of multisectoral action in order to tackle the intricacies attendant tuberculosis and to improve the
global goals set for the year 2027. WHO is calling on the state authorities, global actors and donors to endeavor to implement their pledges, with emphasis on addressing the funding gap for research, especially developing novel vaccines for TB in order to ensure forward movement.
