Media Home
UN Web TV
UN Audiovisual Library
UN PhotoUnifeed
WHO / WORLD TB DAY
STORY: WHO / WORLD TB DAY
TRT: 4:52
SOURCE: WHO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 23 MARCH 2021, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
FILE – GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Wide shot, WHO emblem outside headquarters
23 MARCH 2021, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
2. Wide shot, conference room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tereza Kasaeva, Director, Global TB Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“TB remains one of the world's top infectious killers, claiming close to 4000 lives a day, and 1.4 million lives annually.”
4. Wide shot, conference room
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tereza Kasaeva, Director, Global TB Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“Urgent measures should be taken to ensure continuity and recovery of services for timely TB prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care, in tandem with the COVID-19 response.”
6. Wide shot, conference room
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tereza Kasaeva, Director, Global TB Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been severe, with an additional one 1.4 million people estimated to be missing out on access to care in 2020. This takes the total of those who would have missed out on access to TB care in 2020 to over 4 million. Furthermore, an estimated half a million excess TB deaths could result due to drops in notifications, setting the world back a decade to the level of TB mortality in 2010.”
8. Wide shot, conference room
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Philippe Glaziou, Epidemiologist, Global TB Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“So, this shortfall translates into delays in case detection and increased mortality. Left untreated, TB results in about 50 percent case fatality. About half of the people who have TB, the disease, die from it if they are left untreated.”
10. Wide shot, conference room
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Philippe Glaziou, Epidemiologist, Global TB Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“Before COVID, 20 per cent of TB cases were attributable to undernutrition as TB is a disease of poverty. So, delays in case detection in particular with people who have comorbidities, result in excess mortality, and we've modeled that excess mortality to about half a million additional TB deaths. So, this is an enormous cost of the disruptions due to COVID on health systems and the social changes incurred by responses to COVID.”
12. Wide shot, conference room
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tereza Kasaeva, Director, Global TB Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“Systematic screening should be scaled up to help reach all people with TB prevention and care, improve TB screening using new tools and approaches to reach all people with care could help bridge these gaps, especially by reaching the millions missing out. Systematic screening is critical to ensure we can detect TB early in the people who need it, while also identifying people who could benefit from TB preventive treatment.”
14. Wide shot, conference room
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Cecily Miller, Technical Officer, Prevention, Research and Innovation, Global TB Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“The COVID-19 pandemic has made an already dire situation much worse in terms of reaching all people with TB. So even before the pandemic, we were failing to reach approximately 30 percent of people. And now, of course, we know it's much worse. So, we urgently need strategies to help find all people with TB and get them proper care. One key strategy is systematic screening for tuberculosis. Systematic screening can help find people with TB who would otherwise perhaps be missed because they have little or no access to health care and it can help overcome those barriers for the most vulnerable populations.”
16. Wide shot, conference room
17. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tereza Kasaeva, Director, Global TB Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“You can identify while screening for TB, also other diseases, other lung diseases and potentially also COVID, and so that's why TB screening is multipurpose, is one of the recommendations and services that could be broadly implemented, integrated into the primary health care services and can contribute into the strengthening of the health systems in general.”
18. Wide shot, conference room
19. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tereza Kasaeva, Director, Global TB Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“We need to build back stronger, learning lessons from the COVID-19 response to ensure more resilient health systems are in place and to advocate for rapid innovations, such as vaccines, drugs and diagnostics. TB vaccine is 100 years old. We can learn from the COVID response to ensure more effective vaccines that can truly drive down the epidemic. We have just 600 days to go to reach the 2022 global TB targets and keep the promises made at the UN High Level Meeting on TB.”
20. Wide shot, conference room
An estimated 1.4 million fewer people received care for tuberculosis (TB) in 2020 than in 2019, according to preliminary data compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO) from over 80 countries- a reduction of 21 per cent from 2019.
The countries with the biggest relative gaps were Indonesia (42 per cent), South Africa (41 per cent), Philippines (37 per cent) and India (25per cent).
WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesussaid the effects of COVID-19 go far beyond the death and disease caused by the virus itself. The disruption to essential services for people with TB is just one tragic example of the ways the pandemic is disproportionately affecting some of the world’s poorest people, who were already at higher risk for TB. He said the sobering data points to the need for countries to make universal health coverage a key priority as they respond to and recover from the pandemic, to ensure access to essential services for TB and all diseases.
Building up health systems so everyone can get the services they need is key. Some countries have already taken steps to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on service delivery, by strengthening infection control; expanding use of digital technologies to provide remote advice and support, and providing home-based TB prevention and care.
But many people who have TB are unable to access the care they need. WHO fears that over half a million more people may have died from TB in 2020, simply because they were unable to obtain a diagnosis.
This is not a new problem: before COVID-19 struck, the gap between the estimated number of people developing TB each year and the annual number of people officially reported as diagnosed with TB was about 3 million. The pandemic has greatly exacerbated the situation.
One way to address this is through restored and improved TB screening to rapidly identify people with TB infection or TB disease. New guidance issued by WHO on World TB Day aims to help countries identify the specific needs of communities, the populations at highest risk of TB, and the locations most affected to ensure people can access the most appropriate prevention and care services. This can be achieved through a more systematic use of screening approaches that employ novel tools.
These include the use of molecular rapid diagnostic tests, the use of computer-aided detection to interpret chest radiography and the use of a wider range of approaches for screening people living with HIV for TB. The recommendations are accompanied by an operational guide to facilitate roll-out.
But this will not be enough alone. In 2020, in his report to the United Nations General Assembly, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres issued a set of 10 priority recommendations that countries need to follow. These include activating high-level leadership and action across multiple sectors to urgently reduce TB deaths; increasing funding; advancing universal health coverage for TB prevention and care; addressing drug resistance, promoting human rights and intensifying TB research.
And critically, it will be vital to reduce health inequities.
Dr Tereza Kasaeva, Director of WHO’s Global TB Programme said, “We need to build back stronger, learning lessons from the COVID-19 response to ensure more resilient health systems are in place and to advocate for rapid innovations, such as vaccines, drugs and diagnostics. TB vaccine is 100 years old. We can learn from the COVID response to ensure more effective vaccines that can truly drive down the epidemic. We have just 600 days to go to reach the 2022 global TB targets and keep the promises made at the UN High Level Meeting on TB.”
World TB Day is observed on 24 March each year to raise awareness and understanding about one of the world’s top infectious killers and catalyze action to address its devastating health, social, and economic impact around the world.
Download
There is no media available to download.
