Global TB Report 2022

October 28, 2022

The World Health Organization released the Global TB Report 2022 on October 27 this year.

What is Global TB Report?

The Global TB report is released every year by the World Health Organization to provide a comprehensive assessment of the tuberculosis epidemic and the progress of countries in preventing, diagnosing and treating the disease at the global, regional and national levels. The report is mainly based on the data gathered by the World Health Organization from national health ministries.

What are the key findings of the report?

Over 10.6 million people fell ill because of tuberculosis in 2021. This is a 4.5 per cent increase when compared with 2020 figures.
6 million people have lost their lives to tuberculosis. Of these, 187,000 are HIV patients.
The burden of drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) has risen by 3 per cent between 2020 and 2021. Last year, 450 000 new cases of rifampicin-resistant TB (RR-TB) were recorded.
COVID-19 pandemic and the on-going conflicts in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East are disrupting TB responses across the world. This is exacerbating the situation further.
Due to challenges related to accessibility to essential TB services, many people with tuberculosis have not been diagnosed and treated.
According to the report, the number of reported cases of TB fell from 7.1 million in 2019 to 5.8 million in 2020. The situation improved in 2021, with 6.4 million people reporting TB.
Reduction in the number of reported TB cases means that there is an increase in the number of untreated TB patients. The number of TB deaths have increased as well along with more community transmission of TB infection.
The number of people treated for RR-TB and multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) has fallen between 2019 and 2020. In 2021, only one in three people who are in need of these treatments accessed the medical services.
The TB preventing treatment for HIV positive people has far surpassed the global target of 6 million between 2018 and 2022, reaching more than 10 million in just 4 years. In 2021, seven countries i.e., India, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe – accounted for 82 per cent of those that started preventive TB treatment last year.
The global spending on essential TB services has declined from 6 billion USD in 2019 to 5.4 billion USD in 2021. This is less than 50 per cent of the global target of 13 billion USD annually by 2022.
Over the past 10 years, 79 per cent of the funding for TB services in 2021 was from domestic sources. Main source of external funding for low and middle income countries is from Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund). The US is the largest donor of the Global Fund.

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