As world grapples with coronavirus pandemic, tuberculosis is having a resurgence

Public health experts warn the deadly infectious disease is silently spreading and claiming more lives

Resources have been diverted for Covid-19 and systems are overwhelmed, while lockdowns make it harder to get diagnosed and treated for TB

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A Covid-19 patient is treated at the Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan in February. Experts say the public health systems of many countries have been overwhelmed and they have little capacity to deal with TB. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:30pm, 25 Aug 2020Updated: 11:32pm, 25 Aug 2020

As the globe focuses on the coronavirus pandemic, the world’s most deadly infectious disease is having a resurgence. Public health experts warn that tuberculosis is silently spreading and claiming more lives, as medical resources have been reallocated to fight Covid-19.

The World Health Organisation estimates that in 2018, some 10 million people fell ill with TB – a bacterial infection that usually attacks the lungs – and 1.5 million people died of the disease globally.

But experts fear the coronavirus pandemic has made the situation much worse this year.

“We don’t know what the number will be but the prediction is it will be much higher than [2018, the most recent available data] because of the incredible destruction by the Covid-19 pandemic, the lockdowns and restrictions many countries had to impose,” said Madhukar Pai, director of the McGill International TB Centre at McGill University in Canada.

A chest X-ray of a child with tuberculosis. The disease killed 1.5 million people in 2018. Photo: Shutterstock

Pai said the public health systems of many countries, including China, had been overwhelmed by Covid-19, and had little capacity left to deal with tuberculosis.