The World Health Organization has released its annual report on the global tuberculosis situation. According to it, in 2023, there were 10.8 million people with tuberculosis worldwide (in 2022 - 10.7 million, in 2021 - 10.4 million), with 6.1 percent of cases occurring in people with HIV infection. Experts explain this increase by the consequences of interruptions in the work of tuberculosis services at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The incidence rate increased from 129 in 2020 to 134 cases per 100 thousand population in 2023. At the same time, the rate of incidence growth slowed significantly - to 0.2 percent in the period from 2022 to 2023. The report is published on the WHO website.
In 2023, 8.2 million people worldwide will be diagnosed with TB for the first time, the highest number ever recorded by WHO. Most people with TB in 2023 live in South-East Asia, Africa, and the Western Pacific. Eight countries account for two-thirds of all TB cases: India, Indonesia, China, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The highest number of people with multidrug-resistant TB in 2023 was found in Russia and several countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. At the same time, the number of TB deaths has decreased globally, from 1.32 million in 2022 to 1.25 million in 2023. However, disruptions to TB services due to the COVID-19 pandemic have led to an additional 700,000 TB deaths over four years.