Pandemic Reverses Progress on Other Diseases

By ADF On Sep 28, 2021

Heath officials check the list of people who are to be tested for COVID-19, HIV and tuberculosis in Johannesburg, South Africa. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ADF STAFF

For nearly two years since it was discovered, COVID-19 has dominated the attention of health providers around the globe. It has diverted resources and funds from other health priorities.

Because of the pandemic, fewer people got tested for tuberculosis (TB), HIV and malaria over the past year, according to a new report by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Using words like “devastating” and “catastrophic” to describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the fight against other deadly infectious diseases, the report compared 2019 and 2020 data on HIV, TB and malaria in more than 100 low- and lower-middle-income countries.

“COVID-19 has been the most significant setback in the fight against HIV, TB and malaria that we have encountered in the two decades since the Global Fund was established,” the organization’s executive director, Peter Sands, wrote in an introduction to its Results Report 2021.

For the first time in the 20-year history of the organization, data targets regarding those diseases have gone backward. Testing statistics from April to September 2020 compared to the same six-month period in 2019 showed:

HIV testing fell 41%.
Malaria diagnoses fell by 31%.
Antenatal care visits fell by 43%.
TB referrals for further diagnosis and treatment declined by 59%.

As COVID-19 spread across Africa in 2020, resources such as health workers, laboratories, testing machines and beds were diverted from the prevention and treatment of other diseases.

The pandemic also disrupted supply chains for prevention programs that make available medicine, condoms, clean needles and mosquito nets.

Lockdowns in 2020 made access to health care far more difficult for those with AIDS, TB and malaria.

About 25.7 million Africans are living with HIV, according to the World Health Organization.

The Global Fund reported that 5,000 adolescent girls and young women are infected with HIV in East and Southern Africa every week.

COVID-19 surpassed TB as the world’s most deadly infectious disease in 2020, but TB still killed more than 1.4 million in 2019.

Malaria cases and deaths decreased from 2000 to 2017, the report said, “but that progress stalled around 2018. COVID-19 has exacerbated the challenge, knocking us further off track.”

But there are signs of hope in the ways some countries have risen to the challenge.

The report credited “adaptation measures” and “the diligence and innovation of community health workers” with keeping malaria prevention measures stable compared to 2019. The distribution of mosquito nets increased by 17% with door-to-door efforts.

The Global Fund finances $4 billion a year to prevent and treat these diseases in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and other countries and organizations.

As of June 2021, the organization had invested $22.7 billion in HIV and AIDS programs, $3.8 billion in TB/HIV programs, $14.7 billion in malaria-control programs, and $7.8 billion in TB programs.

Sands said the need for funding has risen because of how the pandemic has diverted the mission.

“In most low- and middle-income countries, the crisis is far from over, with infections and deaths from COVID-19 continuing to increase, and the knock-on impact on HIV, TB and malaria continuing to escalate,” he said in an article on the Global Fund’s website.

“To regain the ground lost on the three epidemics in 2020 and to step up the fight against COVID-19, we have to massively scale up adaptation programs, increase access to COVID-19 tools, and shore up systems for health so they don’t collapse.”

Yacine Djibo, founder and executive director of Speak Up Africa, a public health advocacy organization based in Senegal, echoed that sentiment.

She said the Global Fund statistics underscore the need to increase collaboration and investment to protect against the continent’s other most infectious diseases.

“As we continue to fight the virus,” she told digital magazine Quartz Africa, “we must redouble our efforts to finish the fight against deadly diseases like malaria, so that no one is left behind and especially the most at-risk.”