‘A ticking bomb’: This illness is now killing more people than COVID-19 or AIDS

Key Points

• Tuberculosis kills more people than COVID-19 or AIDS, with a high number of cases in conflict zones.
• Economic impacts of COVID-19 and conflicts are having a huge impact on treating and diagnosing TB.
• A UN hearing aims to mobilise financing and advance research, including exploring mRNA technology for a TB vaccine.

Top UN officials and health industry leaders are trying to tackle

which is now killing more people worldwide than COVID-19 or AIDS.

Among the problems: a high number of cases in conflict zones, including Ukraine and Sudan, where it’s difficult to track down people with the disease and diagnose new sufferers.

Tuberculosis is the biggest infectious disease killer in the world today, taking the lives of around 4400 people every day, including 700 children, Dr Lucica Ditiu, executive director of the

said before a hearing Monday to prepare for a high-level meeting in late September during the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly.

Before

which like TB is transmitted through the air, “we didn’t see very dramatic cases of TB,” she said, “but after COVID we saw a type of TB that we saw in … movies in which people spit blood and they are very weak, and so on.”

Ukraine has the highest number of estimated people with TB in the European region — 34,000 — and also a high number with drug-resistant TB, she said at a news conference last week.

“It’s remarkable, the fact that the Ukrainian people are actually showing an amazing resilience in doing their best to maintain the services for TB,” Ms Ditiu said. “But obviously a lot of people left the country.”

Nonetheless, she said, major efforts have been made to track down those with the disease, but what worries everyone is whether people in Ukraine have access to treatment.

In Sudan, 18,000 people received treatment for tuberculosis in 2021, according to the Stop TB Partnership, which is managed by the UN Office for Project Services and aims to achieve a world free of tuberculosis.

She noted how fast a COVID-19 vaccine was developed, in less than a year, and lamented that it has taken 19 years to get three or four vaccines for TB to phase three trials because of a lack of money.

“Very often, unfortunately, TB is very forgotten,” she said, because “it affects usually people in the low-income countries with a lot of vulnerabilities.”

Among the UN officials speaking at Monday afternoon’s hearing are Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed and World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

There are also two panels: one on fast-tracking access to TB services and the other on mobilising financing to ramp up the TB response and advance research and innovation. It includes the chief medical officer for BioNTech, which with Pfizer used messenger RNA technology to make their

.

Ms Ditiu said BioNTech and a few other companies are looking into using

for a TB vaccine, which she said would have a big impact in more quickly trying to reduce and end the disease.