Nigeria Ranks First On Tuberculosis Affliction In Africa – WHO

World Health Organisation (WHO) has published a global TB report every year since 1997. The main aim of the report is to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the TB epidemic, and of progress in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the disease at global, regional and country levels.

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According to The latest WHO report, Nigeria ranks top with the highest number of people living with tuberculosis in Africa and third in the world, behind Indonesia (2) and India (1).

Nigeria ranks top among the 30 highest TB burdened countries in the world, while it is first in Africa.

According to WHO, Most of the estimated number of incident cases in 2016/2017 occurred in the WHO South-East Asia Region (45%), the WHO African Region (25%: with a large percent of sufferers in Nigeria) and the WHO Western Pacific Region (17%); smaller proportions of cases occurred in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region (7%), the WHO European Region (3%) and the WHO Region of the Americas (3%).

Regionally, the fastest decline in TB incidence is in the WHO European Region (4.6% from 2015 to 2016).

The decline since 2010 has exceeded 4% per year in several high TB burden countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

You can download the full Global Tuberculosis report here

Key facts

• Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide.
• In 2016, 10.4 million people fell ill with TB, and 1.7 million died from the disease (including 0.4 million among people with HIV). Over 95% of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.
• Seven countries account for 64% of the total, with India leading the count, followed by Indonesia, China, Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, and South Africa.
• In 2016, an estimated 1 million children became ill with TB and 250 000 children died of TB (including children with HIV associated TB).
• TB is a leading killer of HIV-positive people: in 2016, 40% of HIV deaths were due to TB.
• Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) remains a public health crisis and a health security threat. WHO estimates that there were 600 000 new cases with resistance to rifampicin – the most effective first-line drug, of which 490 000 had MDR-TB. Globally, TB incidence is falling at about 2% per year. This needs to accelerate to a 4–5% annual decline to reach the 2020 milestones of the End TB Strategy.
• An estimated 53 million lives were saved through TB diagnosis and treatment between 2000 and 2016.
• Ending the TB epidemic by 2030 is among the health targets of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The main data sources for the report are annual rounds of global TB data collection implemented by WHO’s Global TB Programme since 1995 and databases maintained by other WHO departments, UNAIDS and the World Bank.