UNITED NATIONS: The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for an urgent investment of resources, support, care and information into the fight against tuberculosis (TB).
Although 66 million lives have been saved since 2000, the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed those gains, the Geneva-based UN agency said.
For the first time in over a decade, it said, TB deaths increased in 2020. Ongoing conflicts across Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East have further exacerbated the situation for vulnerable populations.
Global spending on TB diagnostics, treatments and prevention in 2020 was less than half of the global target of US$ 13 billion annually by 2022. For research and development, an extra US$ 1.1 billion per year is needed.
“Urgent investments are needed to develop and expand access to the most innovative services and tools to prevent, detect and treat TB that could save millions of lives each year, narrow inequities and avert huge economic losses,” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a statement.
“These investments offer huge returns for countries and donors, in averted health care costs and increased productivity,” he said.
The need for global action is more urgent than ever, the WHO said, as the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years of progress in preventing TB transmission, meaning that for the first time in over a decade, tuberculosis deaths increased in 2020.
“Investments in TB programmes have demonstrated benefits not just for people with TB but for health systems and pandemic preparedness,” WHO said. “Building on lessons learned from COVID-19 research, there is a need to catalyse investment and action to accelerate the development of new tools, especially new TB vaccines.”
Progress towards reaching current TB targets including the WHO Director-General’s “Find.Treat.All” is at risk mainly from a lack of funding, it said.
Between 2018 and 2020, 20 million people received TB treatment. This is halfway to the five-year target which ends in 2022. During the same period, 8.7 million people received TB preventive treatment. This is only 29 percent of the target of reaching 30 million from 2018 to 2022.
In 2020, an estimated 63 percent of children and young adolescents with TB were not reached, or not officially reported to have accessed life-saving TB diagnosis and treatment services, it was pointed out.
The proportion was even higher (72 percent) for under-fives, according to the UN health agency, which said that almost two-thirds of eligible children under five did not receive TB preventive treatment and therefore remain at risk of falling sick.
To expand cover to populations most at risk from TB, WHO has issued new patient-centered recommendations to boost diagnosis, treatment and prevention. These include that:
— Diagnostic testing should now include non-invasive methods, such as stools.
–Rapid molecular diagnostics should be the initial test for TB diagnosis among children and adolescents.
— Children and adolescents who have non-severe forms of drug-susceptible TB should be treated for four months instead of six months.
— For TB meningitis, a six-month regimen is now recommended, instead of 12 months, to reduce the cost for families.
— Two of the newest TB medicines to treat drug-resistant TB (bedaquiline and delamanid) are recommended for use in children of all ages, making it possible for children with drug-resistant TB to receive all-oral treatment regimens, regardless of their age.