The World Health Organization is sounding the alarm on a potential surge in tuberculosis cases due to recent USAID funding cuts.

A yearlong outbreak of tuberculosis in the Kansas City, Kansas area has taken local experts aback, even if it does not appear to be the largest outbreak of the disease in U.S. history as a state health official claimed last week.

In a series of moves experts say signal a shift in how developing countries deal with pharmaceuticals, South Africa, Colombia and others have recently adopted a more combative approach towards drugmakers, pushing back on policies that deny treatment to millions of people with tuberculosis and HIV.

Responding to COVID-19 has taken so much attention and energy that some public health workers believe it pushed tuberculosis off people’s radar.

The World Health Organization says the number of people infected with tuberculosis, including the kind resistant to drugs, rose globally for the first time in years in 2021.

The number of people killed by tuberculosis has risen for the first time in more than a decade, largely because fewer people have got tested and treated as resources have been diverted to fight the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization said Thursday.