A patient waits to meet a doctor in the tuberculosis (TB) department of the government-run Osmania General Hospital in Hyderabad, India on Wednesday. Scientists said Tuesday they are closing in on a vaccine for tuberculosis, the world's deadliest infectious disease that claimed some 1.5 million lives last year. Photo: AFP

The world is spending nowhere near enough to revive the fight against tuberculosis (TB) after the COVID-19 crisis set back years of progress, the WHO said Monday.

Ahead of World Tuberculosis Day on Thursday, the World Health Organization said global spending on TB diagnostics, treatments and prevention in 2020 was less than half of the target of $13 billion annually by 2022.

"TB remains one of the world's deadliest infectious killers," said the WHO. "Each day, over 4,100 people lose their lives to TB and close to 30,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease."

It is the second top infectious killer after COVID-19.

Tuberculosis is caused by bacteria that most often affects the lungs. Like COVID-19, it is transmitted via the air by infected people.

The coronavirus pandemic disrupted access to TB services, the WHO said.

TB deaths increased in 2020 for the first time in more than a decade, and the situation "continues to look bleak," said Tereza Kasaeva, director of the WHO's global TB program.

In 2020, the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic, an estimated 63 percent of under-15s with TB were not reached with or not officially reported to have accessed life-saving TB diagnosis and treatment services.

Almost two thirds of eligible children under 5 did not receive TB preventive treatment.

Over 1.1 million under-15s fell ill with TB in 2020, and 226,000 children and adolescents died, said the WHO.

AFP