10.4 million people contracted tuberculosis last year. A worrying figure that reveals the inadequacy of the resources made available to fight this epidemic. This acknowledgment of failure is made by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its 2016 Tuberculosis Control Report in the world published Thursday, October 13.
The main lesson of the document is that countries must become more involved in the fight against this disease in particular at the level of screening and the declaration of new cases, which are still too incomplete according to the authority. “We face an arduous task to achieve global TB targets,” says Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General. fall behind in the face of this deadly epidemic and we will miss these ambitious goals.”
Numerical objectives so far difficult to meet
According to WHO estimates, 1.8 million people died of tuberculosis in 2015, of which 0.4 million were co-infected with HIV. “Although the number of deaths from tuberculosis globally fell by 22% between 2000 and 2015, the disease was one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide in 2015, a higher number than HIV and malaria”, points out the organization.
Efforts to reduce cases of tuberculosis must be continued, insists the WHO. While the case reduction rate is currently 1.5% (from 2014 to 2015), the goal is to increase it to 4% to 5% by 2020.
The other major challenge for the international community is to reduce the number of deaths from tuberculosis by 90% and infections by 80% by 2030.
#Tuberculosis : measures to end the epidemic are insufficient, according to the WHO https://t.co/fstHRB1zev@WHOpic.twitter.com/t5nIc90A0Y
— United Nations (UN) (@ONU_fr) October 14, 2016
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