Ahead of the World Tuberculosis Day on March 24, Lancet has come out with a study which emphasises how TB is a preventable, treatable and curable disease, yet the world lost 1.6 million lives to it in 2017. Additionally, in the same year, about a quarter of the world’s population was living with the infection. As of now, one third or 35 percent of TB cases are not diagnosed or treated.
If efforts are put in efficiently, the disease can be eradicated by 2045, according to the study. In terms of finances, it states that averting TB deaths can save thrice the current costs.
The disease, which remains one of the leading infectious killers, was declared a public health crisis by the World Health Organization in 1993.
The year 2018 also saw the first ever UN High-Level Meeting (UNHLM) on TB which had ending TB globally as its primary agenda.
According to the data put together by the study, this is what the disease burden, financial targets and UN goals look like:
Effective Diagnosis and Private Health Care
The study talks about high burden countries and how the primary way in which they could target TB is by ensuring they have efficient diagnostic tests and treatment available. It also points out that private healthcare is a good route towards treatment and diagnosis and therefore it’s important to introduce subsidised rates for them.
Modelling demonstrates that subsidising tests and supporting patients to complete treatment in India, the country with the highest TB burden and predominantly private health care, more than one-quarter (28 percent) of TB deaths could be averted over the next 30 years (an additional 8 million lives).Lancet Study
Investing in TB Treatment
The infection has spread its roots so far and deep that even if treatment was to made accessible for 90 percent patients afflicted with TB and 90 percent of them were successfully cured, existing efforts would have still been unable to prevent 800,000 deaths in 2017.
Consequently, the study concluded, global investment has to increase four times to address this disease. The study offers the following numbers in the context:
The initial global costs to reduce TB deaths by 90 percent (from 1.7 million per year to less than 200,000 a year) could be in the order of US$10 billion a year, and investments would need to increase by about US$5 billion a year initially. However, this would be followed by reduced costs (diminishing to US$1-2 billion a year by the early 2040s) as the number of new cases reduces.
Even decades after TB was declared a global health emergency, it still continues to affect so many across the world. Aggressive measures for prevention, treatment and cure are indeed need of the hour for India to be able to fight it effectively.
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