Tuberculosis

2022 - 3 - 24

Post cover — Image courtesy of "COVID-19"

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

In the United States, reported tuberculosis (TB) disease diagnoses fell 20% in 2020 and remained 13% lower in 2021 than TB disease diagnoses made prior to the ...

“Delayed or missed tuberculosis disease diagnoses are threatening the health of people with TB disease and the communities where they live. CDC is headquartered in Atlanta and has experts located throughout the United States and the world. Starting a conversation with your doctor is the first step to protecting your family, friends, and community from TB disease. The 2020 and 2021 declines may be related to factors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, including a true reduction in incidence as well as delayed or missed TB diagnoses. The new data suggest that the pandemic has had a substantial effect on TB trends in the United States. Before COVID-19, TB disease diagnoses typically declined between 1% and 2% each year. Case reports have revealed some people with TB disease were evaluated for COVID-19 — but not tested for TB — during multiple encounters with healthcare systems.

COVID-19 pandemic diverts resources from tuberculosis fight, with ... (ABC News)

Until 2020, tuberculosis (TB) was the leading fatal infectious disease in the world, with around 11 million cases and 1.5 million deaths each year. Resources ...

"The hope has been that it might similarly stimulate an immune response against COVID, and so there are ongoing trials of the impact of the BCG vaccine might have in keeping people safe from COVID as well." "We need to both restore those programs and make up for all of the additional people who have been affected by TB in the meantime." "The remarkable advance in COVID vaccines ... really gives us an insight into what we might be able to do in the TB sphere if a similar kind of focus and political resources were put that way." "There have been some amazing and significant challenges to overcome from a COVID point of view ... but TB continues to be the most impactful infectious disease in many countries around the world, even now," he said. Resources have been stripped from the global TB fight to deal with the pandemic at hand, which experts say could cause a balloon in missed diagnoses and treatment in the years to come. - Researchers say resources have been diverted from studying and diagnosing diseases like TB to fight the COVID-19 pandemic

At the Limits of Cure for Tuberculosis (SAPIENS)

In a new book, anthropologist Bharat Venkat reflects on the history of TB, a seemingly curable yet increasingly deadly disease.

It’s not a strong argument in favor of the economics of this form of treatment. Cases of TB in the world started going down far before the advent of antibiotics. The advent of the randomized controlled trial democratized the cure and made it a cure for the masses. So, the cause of community infection is actually that treatment, and not because it’s too much or too little. This was despite the fact that tuberculosis is a curable condition, or so I was told over and over and over again. Because that person is taking these drugs, and if it’s not working, they lose trust in the health care system. This is what is lost in the desire to scale up quickly, efficiently, cost effectively. The course of an epidemic in any region is also influenced by preexisting health infrastructure. Everyone’s given a box with the first-line treatment. But what that looks like for somebody on the ground is if you have HIV and TB, you’re sent to one place for your TB treatment. Bharat Venkat, an anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, Institute for Society and Genetics, has been studying tuberculosis in India for more than a decade. The world’s first randomized controlled trial for a human disease was conducted on tuberculosis patients.

Tuberculosis: The disease set to be deadlier than Covid once again (PerthNow)

Before Covid-19, tuberculosis was the deadliest infectious disease in the world and it will likely reclaim that title again. The Australian government has been ...

It’s hard to deliver the medicines that we have, and it is also the social determinants of health – decent housing, decent nutrition, impact incredibly on TB. “PNG is sort of the perfect cocktail of what can go wrong. Professor Crabb said Australia had been a “big supporter” of the global fund, but needed to do more. They say increasing the funding from the $242m pledged in 2019 would give the world “a fighting chance” to get progress on fighting the disease back on track. “We know how to fight this disease – in countries where the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria invests, TB deaths have been reduced by a third,” he said. At least two-thirds of the global tuberculosis burden is in the Asia-Pacific region, where multi-drug resistant forms of the disease are on the rise.

As tuberculosis resurges in the Asia Pacific, what lessons from ... (The Guardian)

When the pandemic unfolded, vital resources were diverted away from TB, with infections going undetected, untreated and unmanaged.

We don’t have the luxury of asking TB to simply tread water while we deal with other priorities. That is one key reason why Australia should, at a minimum, lift its commitment to the Global Fund by pledging $450m towards its Seventh Replenishment, to be held later this year. In 2020, 4.7 million people were treated for the disease in Global Fund-supported countries. The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria is our best mechanism. We have the capacity to make a huge difference. The person-to-person spread presents the most significant risk, but misused medication, wrong dosages and unfinished courses can all lead to drug or multi-drug-resistant TB.

Low funding, COVID-19 curtail tuberculosis fight in Africa - World (ReliefWeb)

English News and Press Release on World about Health and Epidemic; published on 24 Mar 2022 by WHO.

The African region is home to 17 of the 30 high-burden TB countries globally. The strategy also sets key milestones that countries should cross by 2020 and 2025 if they are to end the disease. Additionally, 28% fewer patients with drug-resistant TB were detected in Africa in 2020 compared with the previous year. The number of newly detected TB cases also fell in high burden African countries due to disruptions by the COVID-19 pandemic on health services. Gabon reported the steepest decline, with the number of newly detected cases falling by 80% in 2020 from the year before. On average, 56% of cases were detected and enrolled on treatment between 2015 and 2020.