Tuberculosis Cases Rise, But Public Health Agencies Say They Lack the Resources to Keep Up; Why Have Efforts to Eradicate TB Been So Slow; Biden’s Open Borders are Bringing Contagious Diseases to Your Neighborhood

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Tuberculosis cases rise, but public health agencies say they lack the resources to keep up:

Until COVID-19, tuberculosis was the world’s deadliest infectious disease, killing about 1.5 million people annually.

Contrary to public perception, the disease is still active in the United States. The number of TB cases in the U.S. briefly dropped at the start of the pandemic, but there was a 5% increase in cases in 2022, according to the latest numbers from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 7,874 in 2021 to 8,300 in 2022.

Nationally, those numbers are still lower than they were before the pandemic, but some states — including Alaska, Nevada, South Carolina and Washington — have exceeded their pre-pandemic figures, according to a CDC report citing state data.

Even as the number of U.S. tuberculosis cases rises, public health experts say, awareness is lagging. And state and local health departments lack the resources to keep up with prevention and control efforts.

The disease spreads through the air when a person with an active infection coughs or sneezes. A bacterial infection, it usually attacks the lungs, but also can affect other parts of the body, including the kidneys, spine and brain. It’s usually treated via a four- to nine-month regimen of multiple antibiotics. A course of treatment for one tuberculosis case can cost around $20,000 in the U.S., and a drug-resistant tuberculosis case can cost at least $182,000. —>READ MORE HERE

Why have efforts to eradicate TB been so slow?

Tuberculosis is the world’s most deadly infectious disease. But lofty global plans to stamp out this global killer by 2030 were dramatically slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

When COVID struck, the world swiftly responded, pouring unimaginable amounts of money into the development of new drugs and vaccines. In stark contrast, tuberculosis (TB) has persisted for centuries, yet many people in the developed world remain largely unaware of it, and vaccine development has received little attention.

A new push for action, brought on by rising case numbers around the world, could finally make a difference in the fight against TB — but only if that commitment is sustained.

In 2021, global deaths from TB increased for the first time in almost a decade: the disease claimed 1.5 million lives that year, up from 1.4 million in 2020 and 1.2 million in 2019. Lockdowns, disruptions in healthcare, and the redirection of resources hampered active case finding, diagnosis and treatment, reversing gains made in recent years.

Some experts believe that COVID-19 has reversed two decades of progress in the fight against TB — a significant setback from which it will take at least five years to recover. —>READ MORE HERE

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