TB remains world's deadliest infectious disease: WHO

Tuberculosis (TB) remains the world's deadliest infectious disease despite significant progress in reducing deaths, with global efforts estimated to have prevented 54 million TB-related deaths since 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

In its 2018 Global TB Report, the WHO warned that countries are still falling short of the efforts required to end the disease by 2030 and called for stronger political commitment and increased investment in prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

The warning comes ahead of the first-ever UN High-Level Meeting on TB, where nearly 50 heads of state and government are expected to discuss coordinated action against the disease.

According to the report, an estimated 10 million people developed TB worldwide in 2017, while 1.6 million people died from the disease, including around 300,000 people living with HIV. The number of new TB cases is declining by about 2 per cent annually, but the WHO said this pace remains too slow to meet the global target of ending the epidemic by 2030.

One of the biggest challenges is that millions of cases are never formally detected or reported. Of the estimated 10 million people who developed TB in 2017, national health systems officially recorded only 6.4 million cases. This left an estimated 3.6 million people either undiagnosed or diagnosed but not reported through national surveillance systems.

Ten countries accounted for around 80 per cent of this detection and reporting gap, with India, Indonesia and Nigeria among those contributing the largest numbers.

Children are particularly affected by the detection gap. The WHO estimated that around one million children developed TB in 2017, but fewer than half were officially reported, indicating that childhood TB continues to be significantly underdiagnosed.

Treatment coverage is another major concern. Only about 64 per cent of people estimated to have TB were receiving treatment, while coverage needs to rise to at least 90 per cent by 2025 if the world is to remain on track to end the epidemic by 2030.

To accelerate progress, WHO and its partners launched a global initiative in 2018 aimed at providing quality TB care to 40 million people between 2018 and 2022. The initiative also aims to ensure that at least 30 million people receive preventive treatment during the same period.

The WHO particularly recommends preventive treatment for people living with HIV and children under five who live in households where TB is present. New guidance issued by the organisation is intended to improve access to preventive treatment for people at higher risk of developing the disease.

The WHO said tackling TB requires more than medical treatment, as factors such as poverty, malnutrition, crowded living conditions and limited access to healthcare can increase the risk of infection and make prevention more difficult.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the upcoming UN meeting represented an important opportunity to secure stronger political commitments to combat TB and drug-resistant forms of the disease.

The WHO is calling on governments to set measurable targets and ensure that commitments made at the UN meeting translate into sustained action. Without a substantial acceleration in case detection, treatment and prevention, the world risks falling short of its 2030 goal of ending TB as a public health threat.