TB killed more people than Covid in 2020 — WHO report

Kenya has been listed among countries struggling with a high burden of tuberculosis, a report by the World Health Organization shows.

The global tuberculosis report 2021 says that despite the high burden, previous cases of drug resistant TB have drastically reduced.

Drug-resistant TB occurs when bacteria become resistant to the drugs used to treat the disease. This means that the drug can no longer kill the TB bacteria.

In the report, Kenya managed to transition from the list of 30 countries with a high burden of multi-drug resistant TB; with only 589 cases recorded in 2020 and 601 patients put on treatment.

The report however shows that even as the country is focused on the Covid-19 pandemic, TB continues to be a major killer.

Data from the report estimates that at least 21,000 mortalities were reported among HIV negative patients and another 12,000 among HIV positive patients.

To date, Kenya has recorded 5,224 Covid-19 deaths since the first case was reported in March 2020.

The report has attributed the deaths to reduced access to TB diagnosis and treatment as a result of Covid-19 disruptions.

The total number of TB patients in the country in the same year was 139,000 with 35,000 cases being among HIV positive people.

“With solidarity, determination and the equitable use of tools, we will defeat Covid-19. And with the same solidarity, determination and equitable use of tools, we can end TB,” WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“Not only does the virus pose an increased risk to people with TB, it has also caused severe disruption to services,” he added.

According to the report, eight cases of extensively drug-resistant TB  were also reported. The eight were put on treatment.

This is a rare type of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis that is resistant to isoniazid and rifampin, plus any fluoroquinolone and at least one of three injectable second-line drugs such as amikacin, kanamycin, or capreomycin.

Globally, there was a large drop in the number of people newly diagnosed with TB and reported from 7.1 million in 2019 to 5.8 million in 2020.

Similarly, there were an estimated 1.3 million TB deaths among HIV-negative people (up from 1.2 million in 2019) and an additional 214,000 among HIV-positive people (up from 209,000 in 2019).

“Actions to mitigate and reverse these impacts are urgently required. The immediate priority is to restore access to and provision of essential TB services such that levels of TB case detection and treatment can recover to at least 2019 levels, especially in the most badly-affected countries,” the report states.

Tuberculosis is a communicable disease and one of the leading causes of death worldwide ranking above HIV/Aids.

It is caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is spread when people who are sick with TB expel bacteria into the air by coughing.

The disease typically affects the lungs (pulmonary TB) but can affect other sites with about 90 per cent of the people who develop the disease being adults especially men.

TB is curable and preventable with data showing that about 85 per cent of people who develop TB disease can be successfully treated with a six-month drug regimen and regimens of one to six months can be used to treat TB infection.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has reversed years of progress in providing essential TB services and reducing TB disease burden. Global TB targets are mostly off-track, although there are some country and regional success stories,” the report reads.

According to Health director general Patrick Amoth, 27 in every 100 Kenyans who were sick and required to see a healthcare provider at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic could not because of the virus containment measures.

The stringent measures saw some people who were sick opt to stay at home, while those who were required to seek specialised treatment restricted by the lockdown, with majority unaware of where to get the special passes.

Amoth noted that treatment of drug-resistant TB declined by 19 per cent during the pandemic period, with an even greater impact being witnessed in the treatment of extensively drug-resistant TB that recorded a decline of 23 per cent during that period.

“So you can imagine the impact of that, that you have people in the communities with TB, drug-resistant or XDR TB who are not on treatment. The impact they have on spreading that particular mutant of the TB bacteria to the rest of the population and therefore increasing the cost of healthcare because MDR and XDR TB are extremely expensive to treat,” he said.

-Edited by SKanyara