TB researchers are excited by a healthy pipeline of new vaccines under development to supplement the century-old ‘BCG jab’, but each faces years of clinical trials.
One of the most promising candidates, called M72/AS01E, may be able to save millions of lives in the coming year, but trials which began this year may stretch to 2029.
However funding for new research and vaccines was lacking, the report said, with donors pledging only a fifth of what was needed.
The report showed a mixed picture of the toll of the disease around the world, with developing and middle income countries hit hardest. The most vulnerable are the poor, the hungry and those on drugs.
Five countries account for nearly three-in-five of the worldwide total of cases: India (26 per cent), Indonesia (10 per cent), China (6.8 per cent), the Philippines (6.8 per cent) and Pakistan (6.3 per cent).
Rates are falling in most regions of the world, except for the Americas and the Western Pacific.
Earlier this year, a study led by researchers from California’s Stanford University found that booming prison populations across Latin America were driving TB rates in the region.
The number of people locked in the region has jumped four-fold in the past 30 years and the study found prison, with its overcrowding and poor ventilation, was responsible for a third of all TB cases.
America’s Centres for Disease Control earlier this year reported that after decades of declines, rates in the US had started to creep back up after the pandemic and had risen back to 2013 levels.
The worst hit were people born outside the country, Black people and Native Americans.
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