For epidemiologists we are far from the auspoted elimination of tuberculosis by 2030. Cases of drug -resistant tuberculosis increase.
Cases of tuberculosis Between children and adolescents under 15 in the European region of the WHO, 10% increased in 2023: it reveals the 2025 Tuberculosis surveillance and monitoring reportissued today 24 March on the occasion of the World Tuberculosis Day 2025, by the European Center for the Prevention and Control of Diseases (ECDC) and WHO.
A little noble primacy. Tuberculosis is an infectious and contagious disease that generally affects the lungs is that it is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosisalso called Koch Bacillo from the name of the German doctor who discovered it. Still represents one of the 10 main causes of death in the world And – after three years of absolute domination of Covid -19 – she returned to being the main cause of death caused by a single infectious agent. In 2023, 1.25 million people died due to tuberculosis.
Because they worry the childhood cases. Not all people who infect themselves develop the disease. About a quarter of the world population has the so -called latent tuberculous infectiona condition in which the tuberculosis bacterium is present in a quiescent state. Only 5-15% of people with latent infection develop the actual disease during life, but since children under 5 run an increased risk of manifesting it during the first year of infection, pediatric tuberculosis is considered an alarm bell of the presence of tuberculosis within a community. Only people with the open and conclaimed form of the disease are contagious, through the respiratory secretions expelled, for example, through cough.
Growing. The new data indicate that the cases of tuberculosis in children and adolescents under 15 in the 29 countries of Europe and the European economic space constitute 4.3% of total casesthe recorded in this area. Between 2022 and 2023, the cases of pediatric tuberculosis reported rose from 1,341 to 1,689, with a contained growth but constant for the third year in a row. In the general population of the 29 countries there were almost 39,000 cases of TBC. By extending the gaze, in the European region of WHO, which includes Europe and Central Asia, in 2023 over 172,000 cases of new or relapsed tuberculosis occurred, a level similar to that of 2022.
The problem of drug resistance. To worry is also the fact that, for one child out of five with tuberculosis in the area considered, It is not known whether the antibiotic treatment has been completed against the disease. Pharmacological treatment against tuberculosis is based on the use of several antibiotics for a rather long period of time – generally 4 first -line drugs – e The adherence to therapy is fundamental To prevent incomplete cycles, they can encourage the development of storage strains resistant to drugs.
There multiresista tuberculosis (Multidrug-resistant TB) It can be developed when the first prescribed drugs are managed improperly or are ineffective, and must be treated with rarest and expensive medicines and which give greater side effects. In 2023, only two out of five people with this form of tuberculosis had access to adequate treatment.
Let’s not stop now. From 2000 to today, global efforts to combat tuberculosis they saved about 79 million lives And it is important not to surrender precisely now: the goal of ending tuberculosis is in fact among the cornerstones of Goal 3 of the 2030 Agenda. Even if the posthums of Covid, the growing resistance to drugs and conflicts in progress in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe threaten to make us lose the fight against tuberculosis, the motto of the World Tb Day 2025 is “Yes! We can end TB: Commit, Invest, Deliver“(Yes! We can stop the TB: engage, invest, distribute”): an invitation not to interrupt hope – and funding – vital for research and access to everyone of the care.
