MEXICO CITY, March 22, 2024.- Despite the achievements of the response to tuberculosis around the world, TB, a 100% curable disease, continues to claim thousands of lives. According to the World Health Organization, 1.3 million people died from TB in 2022, including 167,000 people living with HIV.
Every year, 11 million people worldwide fall ill with tuberculosis, of which 4% are multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), that is, it cannot be cured with drugs usually used such as Rifampicin, which represents a public health crisis and a threat to global health security.
In 2022, the TB incidence rate in the Region of the Americas was 31 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, a growth of 13% compared to the 2015 baseline of 27.5 cases. According to WHO estimates, TB deaths also increased by 40% in the same period: in 2022, about 35,000 people died, equivalent to 3.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, of which 11,200 (31%) were people living with HIV.
Progress has been limited and unsustained in the Region of the Americas. Although the percentage of cases diagnosed by WHO-recommended rapid tests increased from 13% to 40% (from 2015 to 2022), anti-TB treatment coverage decreased from 81% to 74%. In addition, the overall treatment success rate fell from 76% to 72%. And the overall TB case fatality rate in the region increased from 7% of cases to 9%.
Despite being a 100% curable disease, one of the main barriers to TB eradication is the duration of treatments with traditional drugs, such as Rifampicin and Isoniazid, which can take up to 9 months to complete, and, in the case of multidrug-resistant TB, can include daily painful injections and healing periods of up to 2 years. AIDS Healthcare Foundation joins the Pan American Health Organization’s call for governments to take action and opt for more modern treatments of shorter duration, which raise people’s cure rates.
Visit WeCanEndTB.org and learn more about the actions that individuals, civil society and governments can take to END TB.
About AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF)
Aids Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is the world’s largest AIDS organization, currently providing medical care and/or services to more than 1.9 million people in 45 countries including the United States and the Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, Asia/Pacific region and Eastern Europe regions. Learn more about AHF in https://ahflatamycaribe.org/
