⁍ COVID-19 shut South Africa’s mines, disrupting TB care for thousands of miners.

---

⁍ World Bank: 2,500-3,000 TB cases per 100,000 mineworkers in Southern Africa.

---

⁍ In South Africa, about 19,000 people have died from COVID-19.

---

⁍ That compares with 58,000 deaths in the country from TB last year.

---

– Last year, the World Health Organization declared an “epidemic” oftuberculosis (TB) around the world. This year, it’s in the midst of an “epidemic” of its own. Tuberculosis is spread by dust inhalation in mines, and in South Africa alone, some 19,000 miners have died from the disease so far this year, the BBC reports. That’s more than the 58,000 who died from TB last year, and it’s a death toll that health officials fear could be far higher if not for the fact that miners are three times more likely than the average person to contract the disease. “Miners have a three-times higher chance of getting TB than the average person,” doctor Cleopas Sibanda tells the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Those miners that made it home, like many from Swaziland, may not have access to proper treatment. And all this focus on stopping COVID means we could lose more lives to TB.” South Africa is home to about 45,000 mine workers from around the world, and about 10% of them are from neighboring countries such as Botswana, eSwatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. Sibanda says there are 2,500-3,000 TB cases reported per 100,000 mine workers in Southern Africa, 10 times more than what the World Health Organization classifies as an epidemic emergency. Patients who don’t consistently take their TB medication can spread drug-resistant TB, which is resistant to common medications. “It feels like a bad flu, one that steals your oxygen,” says a 67-year-old mine worker.