IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON TUBERCULOSIS MANAGEMENT

Over the years tuberculosis has been considered a major public health problem often influenced by a number of factors including poverty overcrowding malnutrition wars natural disasters etc. and by certain pathologies (HIV/AIDS) The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has added yet another impetus to the onset of tuberculosis in a community whose tuberculosis prevalence remains very high and whose health system is already weakened by several emerging and neglected diseases and epidemics. Indeed COVID-19 has had a devastating and highly negative impact on the diagnostic and therapeutic management of tuberculosis both nationally and internationally even reversing the progress made in providing essential services (NTPs) in countries with a high prevalence or incidence of tuberculosis to meet the WHO's goal of Ending the Global Tuberculosis Epidemic by 2030 and also in reducing the overall management of tuberculosis disease (DOTS Strategy).