Around 1.4 million more people could die of tuberculosis (TB) by 2025 due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the fight against the infection, predicts new research.
Worldwide efforts to grapple with coronavirus are badly affecting diagnosis, treatment and prevention of TB, experts said, predicting an additional 6.3 million cases of the infection by 2025 as a result, according to a report published Wednesday.
TB is a bacterial infection that affects the lungs and has been around for hundreds of years.
It kills 1.5 million people per year -- more than any other infectious disease -- and has been subject to a major drive to eliminate it from human populations in recent decades.
But those efforts have been derailed due to coronavirus, said Dr Lucica Ditiu, executive director of the Stop TB Partnership, a United Nations-hosted entity that aims to end the disease by 2030.
"Today, governments face a torturous path, navigating between the imminent disaster of Covid-19 and the long-running plague of TB," said Ditiu in a press release.
"But choosing to ignore TB again would erase at least half a decade of hard-earned progress against the world's most deadly infection and make millions more people sick."
Simply put, there's now a bigger fire than TB. Gotta get it under control before the pre-existing fires can once again be addressed with full resources.
How long will those fires have to burn though?
Scary thought.
Grace & Peace & Love to you all -
Matt