Tuberculosis deadliest infectious disease after Covid-19

Tuberculosis (TB) was the deadliest infectious disease after covid-19 in Europe and Central Asia last year. This is the conclusion of the European Center for Disease Prevention (ECDC) in Stockholm and the European branch of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Copenhagen.

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According to the WHO, an estimated 20,000 deaths from tuberculosis in Europe and Central Asia in 2019. Due to the corona pandemic, the approach to TB is stalled, partly because fewer tests are carried out and fewer patients are treated. As a result, there is a risk that undiagnosed TB patients will light others.

The latest data on TB cases dates back to 2019, when about 246,000 were diagnosed, a decrease of 13,000 from a year earlier. Europe and Central Asia accounted for 2.5 percent of all infections worldwide, it sounds.

There is great concern about multi-resistant variants of TB, which means that the bacteria is resistant to the two most potent antibiotics. “The risk of drug-resistant TB is becoming more and more real, and that is not a risk we want to take,” warns the head of the WHO’s European division, Hans Kluge.

The WHO’s European working area covers 53 countries, from Iceland to Uzbekistan. Russia and Turkey are also included. Eighteen countries, mainly in Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, account for 80 percent of the cases in the region.

Most cases were identified in Russia (73,000), followed by Ukraine (34,000), Uzbekistan (22,000), and Romania, Turkey and Kazakhstan (about 13,000 cases each). The figures have been published in the run-up to World Tuberculosis Day, Wednesday.

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