PH still among Top 5 in tally of TB cases

Inquirer file photo

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines has remained among the top five countries that accounted for more than half of the tuberculosis (TB) cases in the world.

According to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Tuberculosis Report 2024 released on Wednesday, TB has killed 1.25 million people across the globe in 2023, making it once again the world’s leading infectious disease killer, surpassing COVID-19 from 2020 to 2022.

The report said an estimated 10.8 million people worldwide fell ill with TB in 2023, with children and young adolescents accounting for 12 percent of the cases.

READ: 8 million people worldwide infected with TB in 2023

“Those newly diagnosed in 2022 and 2023 probably included a sizable backlog of people who developed TB in previous years, but whose diagnosis and treatment was delayed by COVID-related disruptions,” it noted.

As the disease has continued to affect people worldwide, five countries accounted for 56 percent of the global TB burden. They are India (26 percent), Indonesia (10 percent), China (6.8 percent), the Philippines (6.8 percent) and Pakistan (6.3 percent).

Flagged by WHO

The Philippines was also among the 10 countries flagged by the WHO for being “high-burden” in terms of TB incidence, number of patients with TB and HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), and number of patients contracting multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB.

According to the WHO data, there were 739,000 Filipinos who contracted TB in 2023. Of this, 5,400 have a TB and HIV coinfection.

This translates to 643 people per 100,000 population being infected with the contagious and airborne disease. The figure was way higher than the average in the Western Pacific region, where the TB incidence rate is only at 97 per 100,000 people.

It was also estimated that 37,000 Filipinos with TB died in 2023, making it among the top causes of deaths in the country.

While the incidence rate and deaths due to TB have decreased in the region from 2015 to 2023, the reverse was happening in the Philippines.

Public health crisis

TB incidence rate increased by 17 percent, while TB deaths increased by 33 percent. Following the trend, the country may not be able to achieve the 2025 global milestones of reducing the TB incidence rate by 50 percent, and decrease the total TB deaths by 75 percent compared with 2015.

The WHO report also noted the Philippines for being among the top five countries that accounted for more than half of the 400,000 people across the globe to have developed MDR-TB—India (27 percent), the Russian Federation (7.4 percent), Indonesia (7.4 percent), China (7.3 percent) and the Philippines (7.2 percent).

MDR-TB is a form of TB caused by bacteria that do not respond to isoniazid and rifampicin, the two most effective first-line TB drugs. While MDR-TB is curable, a patient needs to take stronger antibiotics which tend to be more expensive and have severe side effects.

The WHO treats MDR-TB as a public health crisis and a health security threat.

Only about two in five people with MDR-TB accessed treatment in 2023.

“The fact that TB still kills and sickens so many people is an outrage, when we have the tools to prevent it, detect it and treat it,” WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.