Covid focus has erased years of progress on other diseases, say experts

Years of progress in fighting infectious diseases in the world's poorer nations have been wiped out after resources were diverted to tackle the Pandemic and treatment disrupted.

Health professionals have been redeployed to focus on coronaviruses, while lockdowns and social distancing have stymied prevention programmes, stoking concerns that deaths from HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria in some nations are now on track to exceed those caused by the Pandemic so far.

The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, one of the biggest global health funders, said the impact of the crisis on the treatment of these conditions had been pretty devastating.

For the first time in the 20-year history of the Global Fund, we have seen significant reversals across all three diseases.

HIV prevention services have been badly hit by social distancing and school closings. In the countries where the fund invests, the number of people reached by prevention services fell by 11 per cent between the years of 2020 and 2019. HIV testing fell by 22 per cent and mothers received medicine to prevent transmission of HIV to their babies by 5 per cent.

The number of people treated for Tuberculosis around the world has fallen by 18 per cent over the last year. The 1.5m people who died from the disease in 2020 is a return to where we were in the year before.

Malaria testing has fallen by 4%, while the number of deaths has not changed, reflecting the first real reversal in the deaths trajectory of Malaria that we have seen for a long time.

On Wednesday, the Global Fund laid out an investment case, appealing to multilateral donors for an additional $18 billion to get back on track to end AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Solomon Zewdu, the Gates Foundation's deputy director, said that the global south was at a disadvantage after the Pandemic because of the weakness of many health systems in lower-middle income nations.

He said that it has been a juggling act for every country on the African continent.

The fight against other diseases should no longer be constrained by the fight against the virus.

About 36 percent of countries have reported disruptions to disease control, according to the director of Integrated Health Services for the World Health Organization. Almost half of countries reported that diagnosis and treatment had been affected by the biggest impact. According to the WHO, the disruptions were estimated to have led to 100,000 more deaths from Tuberculosis.

Almost half of the countries said that HIV testing had been affected.

New approaches developed during the Pandemic prove their worth.

The Global Fund supported a programme in India that used volunteers to look for cases of Tuberculosis. She said the number fell from 97,000 in the first quarter of 2020 to about 26,000 in the following three months. The programme has adapted by using digital tools such as messaging apps and video conferencing to monitor people and by bringing services closer to communities.

Professor Guy Marks, president of the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, believed the crisis had engendered a new understanding of the impact.