Report: COVID-19 Pandemic Had ‘Devastating’ Impact in Treatment, Prevention of HIV, Tuberculosis

A new report released Wednesday says the COVID-19 pandemic had a “devastating” impact in the fight against HIV and tuberculosis last year.

The Global Fund, an alliance of governments, civil society groups and private sector entities, says the number of people reached with HIV prevention programs and services declined 11 percent in 2020 compared with the year before, while testing for HIV dropped 22 percent last year. The number of people treated for drug-resistant tuberculosis fell by 19 percent in countries where the Fund invests -- a figure the Geneva-based group described as “staggering” -- while those being treated for “extensively” drug-resistant tuberculosis plummeted by 37 percent. Peter Sands, the executive director of The Global Fund, told the Reuters news agency that about one million fewer people were treated for tuberculosis in 2020 than the year before, a fact he says will “inevitably mean that hundreds of thousands of people will die.”