Nearly 7,000 excess deaths from tuberculosis occurred in the WHO European Region in the three years of the pandemic from 2020 - 2022, compared to what experts had expected based on pre-2020 estimates.
ECDC and WHO/Europe have issued a statement announcing that the European Region remains a long way from meeting its End Tuberculosis Strategy targets, despite having the tools to do so.
According to the latest ECDC/WHO report on tuberculosis (TB) surveillance and monitoring in Europe, a sharp drop (24%) in reported tuberculosis cases between 2019 and 2020 was probably exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which hindered detection and reporting.
The tuberculosis (TB) burden in the WHO European Region as a whole is decreasing, and is down 19% overall for 2015–2019, according to the latest WHO/European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) report Tuberculosis surveillance and monitoring in Europe 2021 (2019 data).
A joint ECDC – WHO report released today shows an overall decline of 4% in the number of notified tuberculosis cases between 2014 and 2018 in the EU/EEA countries.