Africa’s progress to beat TB

Tuberculosis (TB) is reclaiming the title of the world’s most deadly infection, even as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to kill an estimated 1 450 people daily.

But this is not news to African countries, home to one third of the people dying from TB though they have less than a fifth of the world’s population. On our continent, only 60 percent of the estimated cases have been diagnosed. All the other infections are hidden by poverty and the disease continues to spread.

Consider Zanyiwe’s story, who is recovering from TB a fifth time in Cape Town, South Africa. Her son-in-law died from the disease and her 18-month old granddaughter has it currently.

Four years ago, there was hope that TB might be receiving the attention it deserves. The UN held a high-level meeting with heads of state in September 2018 where over half of the world’s nations convened to rally support to tackle TB.

Many pledges were made; fulfillment of these pledges got off to a slow start and then came Covid-19.

The first commitment was to find and treat 40 million people with TB between 2018 and 2022, including 3.5 million children and 1.5 million people with drug-resistant TB. We are 19 percent behind that overall goal, but 32 percent behind with children and 46 percent behind with drug-resistant TB.

We now have new and shorter treatment regimens for TB and drug-resistant TB. Using these new technologies could make next year, when another UN high level meeting on TB will convene, a different story.

The second commitment was to provide preventive treatment for 30 million people at risk of TB infections. We are 48 percent behind here, while we already exceeded the sub-target of reaching six million people with HIV with preventive treatment, from 2018-2021 we’ve only provided preventive treatment to 2.2 million household contacts of people with TB, 11.5 percent of the goal.

With more effective and shorter preventive regimens to deploy, but we need the outreach capacity and willingness of countries to get the treatment into the hands of those who need it.

World leaders also pledged to spend $13 billion annually on prevention, diagnosis and treatment by 2022.

In 2021, only 42 percent of that was spent. For TB research, $2 billion annually was pledged by 2022, but in 2021 research spending reached 46 percent of that amount.

Rolling out the new treatments will require a stronger embrace of these pledges. The status quo will not get us there.

While we have yet to finish 2022, it is obvious that we will not meet these goals though there have been signs of progress.

First, Gabon, Kenya, Liberia, Namibia, Congo, Sierra Leone and Uganda all made progress in finding more cases of TB last year.

This shows the political will needed to keep their people healthier. Overall, Africa found four  percent more TB in 2021 than in 2020. It’s a start—and we can do better.

New TB medicines are being supported by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Six-month therapy for drug-resistant TB has been approved in more than 20 countries, including the Democratic Congo, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. And Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe are working to roll out a new TB prevention treatment.

In Africa, we will not mistake these initial signs of progress for anything more significant.

Next year, the world will consider their long-ignored pledges. We need to show the world that it is time to move forward; all that’s been missing is political will.