This image, captured on April 2, 2024, depicts Vietnamese physician Truong Duc Thai examining a patient with drug-resistant tuberculosis at the National Lung Hospital in Hanoi. AFP File Photo
According to a World Health Organization report released on Tuesday, tuberculosis surpassed COVID-19 as the leading cause of infectious disease-related fatalities in 2023, underscoring the ongoing difficulties in the global campaign to eliminate the disease. Last year, approximately 8.2 million individuals were newly diagnosed, enabling them to receive appropriate treatment—the highest figure recorded since WHO initiated global TB monitoring in 1995—up from 7.5 million cases reported in 2022, as per the UN agency. The data indicates that eradicating tuberculosis remains an elusive objective, as the battle against the disease continues to face persistent obstacles such as significant underfunding, according to the report.
"The fact that TB continues to claim and debilitate so many lives is a travesty, given that we possess the means to prevent, detect, and treat it," stated WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a press briefing. Although the number of deaths attributed to the disease decreased to 1.25 million in 2023 from 1.32 million in 2022, the overall number of individuals falling ill slightly increased to an estimated 10.8 million in 2023. The agency noted that global milestones and targets for reducing the disease burden are lagging, and substantial progress is required to achieve other targets set for 2027.
Low- and middle-income countries, which shoulder 98% of the disease burden, encountered significant funding shortfalls. In 2023, the gap between the estimated number of new tuberculosis cases and those reported narrowed to approximately 2.7 million, down from the COVID-19 pandemic levels of around 4 million in 2020 and 2021. The WHO emphasized that the multidrug-resistant form of the disease remains a significant public health crisis.
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