Victorian illness warning as circumstances surge and younger Brits left ‘unable to stroll’
A leading medical professor has warned that England is rapidly losing its status as a low-TB nation as cases of the Victorian disease soar, with some young people left unable to walk from severe spinal tuberculosis
Secondary tuberculosis infection and close-up view of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, the causative agent of tuberculosis.(Image: Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF)
Young Brits have been rendered unable to walk after contracting severe tuberculosis, a leading medical expert has revealed. Professor Onn Min Kon, a top respiratory specialist and chief of the tuberculosis unit at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, has cautioned that England is swiftly heading towards losing its low-TB classification as infections surge.
He noted that “productive young people in the prime of their lives” are suddenly discovering “they can’t walk”. The professor’s comments came following a TB outbreak at an Amazon depot in Coventry where 10 workers tested positive, prompting trade union leaders to call for the facility’s closure.
This mirrors a broader national trend of increasing cases, with notification figures in England climbing by 13% in 2024 and an additional 1.5% in the opening three quarters of 2025 – placing the country on the verge of exceeding the World Health Organisation’s benchmark to become a “medium incidence” nation for the first time this millennium, reports the Mirror.
Outlining the symptoms he’s witnessed in TB sufferers across London and hospitals nationwide in recent years, the professor explained: “Certainly in London, the severity of the presentation seem to be worse now. I think that is partially a carryover from COVID.
“People were ascribing their cough to COVID and lots of other infections, but in fact they were potentially harbouring infectious TB, and in a much more advanced phase. We also see a large element of people with what we call extra-pulmonary TB, which means the TB is not just in the lung.
“You can have terrible, devastating, spinal disease and people are paralysed. These are productive young people in the prime of their lives – making a living and bringing up a family – and suddenly they find they can’t walk.
“That has massive financial and rehabilitation implications for them.” Whilst spinal TB remains “not that common”, accounting for fewer than 10% of all instances, he noted that the consequences “are really profound and long-lasting” – with risks escalating alongside higher disease prevalence within communities.
England faces threat of losing low-TB classification. The disease once dubbed ‘consumption’ during Victorian times has largely been relegated to history textbooks and Charles Dickens stories in recent decades – yet it has “never completely disappeared off the radar”, the professor warned.
England recorded 5,480 cases in 2024 alone, with the expert noting it “always shocks people when I tell people how many cases of TB there are actually in the UK every year”. The surge in TB instances across England now places the nation in genuine danger of forfeiting its low-incidence status for the condition, with the World Health Organisation potentially reclassifying it into the medium-risk bracket – possibly grouping it alongside Albania, Romania and Egypt.
The WHO defines “medium incidence” as nations reporting between 10 and 99 cases per 100,000 residents, whilst England currently sits at 9.37, based on the most recent UKHSA data from October. Meanwhile, the NHS has faced an estimated bill exceeding £175 million across the past five years.
The rising TB situation across the UK can partly be attributed to heightened cross-border movement, encompassing both tourism and migration flows, with Professor Onn Min Kon emphasising the crucial need for the UK to collaborate internationally in reducing worldwide cases, since “TB ‘anywhere’ is TB ‘everywhere'”. Massive reductions in global funding – notably Donald Trump’s axing of the USAID programme last year – are already being connected to “devastating” consequences for anti-TB initiatives.
In the Philippines, the most effective treatments for multi-drug resistant TB were “effectively funded by the USAID scheme”, he explained, and when America “pulled out, very suddenly”, regional health systems were forced to discontinue their use. He cautioned that this withdrawal of access to optimal medication creates a “massive impact” regarding the capacity to manage strains resistant to conventional therapy, rendering the illness more challenging to tackle worldwide and, consequently, within the UK.
The professor, a campaign spokesperson for the Healthy World, Secure Britain Campaign, highlighted that prisons and the homeless population have become significant hotspots for the disease in the UK, as it requires “quite a few hours” in a confined space “to be able to be infected by it”. Alongside the current screening programme, which targets individuals entering Britain from high incidence countries for stays exceeding six months, he hopes this can be expanded to encompass these vulnerable settings, as recent outbreaks indicate the infection is now spreading among those who haven’t travelled abroad.
While cases have typically been concentrated around major urban hubs, such as London, some of the most significant increases recently have occurred in areas previously considered “low incidence”, he explained – underscoring the necessity of having TB specialists and nurses in every NHS trust.
“If you look at where the TB is going up in the UK, it’s not going up where you think it might be sometimes”, the professor noted. Amazon asserts deliveries ‘unaffected’ following TB outbreak.
Last week, Amazon stated its delivery operations remain unaffected by a tuberculosis outbreak at its primary delivery hub in Coventry. A total of 10 individuals tested positive for latent TB during screenings at the Lyons Park warehouse in September 2025, though operations at the facility are reported to be continuing “as normal”.
GMB union leaders called on Amazon to temporarily shut down the warehouse, whilst Coventry Labour MP Taiwo Owatemi declared that Amazon bears a “clear responsibility” to staff and the public. The online retail behemoth maintained that no further cases had been detected and insisted there was no continuing threat to the public.
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