Wagdy Amin, Consultant Chest Diseases, member of the Scientific Committee to Combat Corona, revealed that the World Health Organization report was issued on the global situation of tuberculosis during the current month, as statistics confirmed the impact of discovering and recording cases of tuberculosis patients globally with the Corona pandemic, which caused a decrease of 18% as a result of the occurrence of the virus. Deficiency in tuberculosis services in the world during 2020 compared to 2019, as the discovered cases decreased from 7.1 million to 5.8 million cases globally.
He said during the conference of the Egyptian Society of Chest and Tuberculosis Diseases headed by Dr. Mohamed Awad Taj El-Din, advisor to the president for health and preventive affairs, that in Egypt the situation is different because, in light of the Corona pandemic, tuberculosis services were provided to patients without stopping, and therefore Egypt achieved a decrease in the incidence of the disease to reach the number of Cases in Egypt to 11 cases per 100 thousand of the population.
He added: “The report dealt with updates in the treatment of sensitive and drug-resistant tuberculosis, as some studies demonstrated a decrease in the treatment period of sensitive tuberculosis from 6 months to 4 months only, and a decrease in drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment from 18 months to 9 months only, using some types of modern drugs that It has proven to be effective in treating both of these types.
He explained that Egypt did not stop caring for tuberculosis patients during the pandemic by providing all methods of early detection of tuberculosis and all medicines, through 34 hospitals and 131 chest diseases centers, spread throughout the Republic, and carrying out campaigns for early detection of the disease and follow-up of patients through service offices. The social network deployed in the units to ensure that patients continue to be treated while following precautionary measures to ensure that the Corona virus does not spread among tuberculosis patients, explaining that the Corona virus may be a cause of high deaths among these patients.
He continued, “Drug-resistant tuberculosis is divided into 5 types, the first type is resistant to isoniazid alone, the second is resistant to rifampicin alone, and the third type is resistant to both drugs, and this type is known as drug-resistant tuberculosis as they are the two main drugs for treating tuberculosis, and the fourth type is pre-severe. The resistance, which is resistant to rifampicin and levofloxacin, and the latter type is highly resistant and is resistant to the drugs rifampicin and levofloxacin, in addition to bedacholine and linezolid.