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PARIS: Global blockade caused by Covid-19 risks “devastating” increase in tuberculosis cases, with nearly 1.4 million additional deaths from the world’s biggest infectious killer by 2025, recent research showed on Wednesday.
Tuberculosis, a bacterial infection that normally attacks patients’ lungs, is largely treatable but still infects about 10 million people each year.
In 2018, it killed around 1.5 million people, according to the World Health Organization, including more than 200,000 children.
Because effective medication exists, the global response to TB focuses on analyzing and treating as many patients as possible.
But as Covid-19 forces governments to shut populations down, new disease models showed that social distancing could lead to a disastrous rebound in TB infections, the effects of which will persist for years.
This is because social distancing will make it impossible for health workers to assess vulnerable populations and for patients to have access to ongoing treatments.
“Despite having medications and treatment … we are not close to finishing it yet, and TB remains the leading cause of death from infectious diseases,” said Lucica Ditiu, executive director of the Stop TB Partnership.
“Covid has hit us very hard. The more people we have not diagnosed and treated, the more problems we will have in the coming years. “
The duration of the block is crucial
Models developed in association with epidemiologists at Imperial College London used tuberculosis response data from three high-incidence countries: India, Kenya, and Ukraine.
They showed that a two-month global shutdown and rapid recovery in response programs could lead to more than 1.8 additional TB infections worldwide over the next five years, and a prognosis of 340,000 deaths.
But if countries don’t quickly re-implement their tests and treatments, the models showed that things would get much worse.
For example, a three-month blockade followed by a 10-month “recovery” period could lead to an additional six million infections and 1.4 million TB deaths by 2025.
“Tuberculosis is really curable with affordable medications. Therefore, many monitoring efforts in recent decades have really focused on diagnosing cases as quickly as possible, “said Nimalan Arinaminpathy, associate professor of mathematical epidemiology at Imperial.
“Blockages and other measures against the coronavirus are affecting these systems to control tuberculosis. In fact (on models) it takes several years for this high TB burden to drop to pre-block levels. ”
“Extreme situation”
The research did not look at comorbidity between tuberculosis, an acute lung infection that leaves even survivors’ lungs compromised, and Covid-19, a viral infection that often leads to lung problems.
Cheri Vincent, director of the TB division at Usaid, said several studies looked at how TB puts an individual at increased risk of getting sick with Covid-19.
“As that information becomes available, we may be seeing a much more serious situation,” he said.
Suvunand Sahu, deputy chief executive of the Stop TB Partnership, said there was great concern for the millions of people living with the infection as Covid-19 spreads.
“We know that TB creates damage to the lungs, so when lung capacity is limited, Covid’s adverse outcomes would naturally be expected to be greater,” he said.
