TB treatment shows remarkable progress says WHO

Dar es Salaam. Efforts to find and treat people with tuberculosis are showing remarkable progress, with 7 million people with TB found globally in 2018, including 600,000 more people than in 2017, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

In its statement issued on Thursday October 17,2019,  new results from the organisation’s global TB report show that the percentage of people “missed” by health systems after failing to be diagnosed, treated or reported has dropped significantly to around 30 per cent from 40 per cent in the past three years.

The report shows that the largest share of additional cases comes from countries in Asia with a high burden of TB: India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Bangladesh.

TB remains the world’s biggest infectious killer, with 1.5 million people still dying of the disease in 2018, even though it is fully preventable and curable.

“Progress in reducing TB has been frustratingly slow for many years,” says WHO in its report.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said: “Sustained progress on TB will require strong health systems and better access to services. That means a renewed investment in primary health care and a commitment to universal health coverage.”

Health experts estimate that the reason nearly one-third of the world’s 10 million people with new active TB cases are missed by health systems each year is because of persistent barriers to accessing health services, and because vulnerable populations – such as migrants, miners, children and people affected by HIV – remain hard to reach.

The only way to end the epidemic is to sharply reduce the number of people who live with the disease without treatment and continue to transmit it to others.

Today’s results show a marked change in trajectory, aided by a strategic initiative by the Global Fund, the Stop TB Partnership and WHO to sharply accelerate progress in finding people with TB, concentrating in 13 countries with the highest disease burden, with a goal of finding an additional 1.5 million people with TB by the end of 2019, and then again every year.

“In these countries, by the end of 2018, already more than 800,000 additional patients were found and treated, compared with the baseline of 2015. In total, these countries reported 4.5 million patients under treatment,” says a statement.

"It’s great to see that concentrated efforts to find people with TB are yielding results,” said Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund. “We still have a long way to go on TB, but with strong political commitment and smart interventions, we can close the gap.”

Lucica Ditiu, Executive Director of the Stop TB Partnership, stressed the role of political commitment and translating it into action.