A report from a long-awaited tuberculosis prevalence survey shows that South Africa has a far higher number of people living with tuberculosis than earlier reported in 2018.
The prevalence of tuberculosis as of 2018 was pegged at 737 per 100,000. It is believed that quite a number of people in the nation have the disease but have not accessed treatment yet.
Tuberculosis has been listed as one of the leading causes of death in South Africa despite the fact that it is a curable disease albeit a highly infectious airborne one.
This new survey carried out showed that tuberculosis is way more prevalent than it was initially believed to be. The new Data showed that there are 360,000 new cases of the disease in 2019. The WHO estimates that at least 58,000 people could have died from the infection.
The new survey conducted in a random sample of 35,000 people showed that more men than women with tuberculosis were not diagnosed and generally those with tuberculosis do not have the usual symptoms attributed to the disease such as cough, fever weight loss and more.
With this new knowledge, experts have realized that there is a high probability that the current prevalence rate of tuberculosis during the pandemic will be much worse as there was far fewer access to tuberculosis treatment during the peak of the lockdowns. There are also current speculations on how to quickly detect the disease considering its changing symptoms.