Years of progress in fighting infectious diseases in the world’s poorer nations have been wiped out after resources were redirected to tackle the pandemic and treatment disrupted, experts have warned.
Health professionals have been redeployed to focus on coronavirus, while lockdowns and social distancing have stymied prevention programmes, stoking concerns that deaths from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria in some nations are now on track to exceed those caused by the pandemic so far.
Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, one of the biggest global health funders, said the knock-on impact of the crisis on the treatment of these conditions had been “pretty devastating”.