World TB Awareness Day, March 24th
In 1993 the World Health Organization declared TB a global health emergency, developing the Stop TB Partnership. In 200o new cases of TB began to emerge which were drug resistant, elevating TB to epidemic proportions for the next four years, as some 20% of TB cases where resistant to standard treatments.
According to the WHO an estimated 1.5 million people died from TB in 2006, with an additional 200,000 deaths from HIV-associated TB. TB is curable if detected early and correctly treated, however multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), HIV-associated TB, and weak health systems continue to pose major challenges in the fight against TB world wide.
The Stop TB Partnership set the Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis, which has aimed to save some 14 million lives between 2006 and 2015. However the WHO claims that Worldwide efforts to confront TB are making progress, but too slowly.
The WHO estimates that around 4.8 billion US dollars is needed to effectively control TB in developing and lower to mid-income countries in 2008 alone. Currently there is some $ 1 billion ear marked for MDR-TB and XDR-TB, however that leaves a substantial gap in funding, of some $ 2.5 billion, which includes $ 500 million gap for MDR-TB and XDR-TB.
Related links:
Tuberculosis: topical overview
WHO program on TB
Stop TB Partnership official World TB Awareness Day 2008 site
Global tuberculosis control 2008 - surveillance, planning, financing - The WHO’s twelfth annual report on global tuberculosis control
Anti-tuberculosis drug resistance in the world report
The Global Response Plan
The Global Response Plan factsheet
Tuberculosis Drugs - Sixth Invitation for Expressions of Interest, May 2005 - UNICEF
March 27th, 2008 at 9:22 am
A UN meeting in June will examine the worrisome links between tuberculosis and HIV and how best to help millions of people who have both diseases, Jorge Sampaio, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Stop TB, said March 25. “What we need from that meeting is to come out of it with a common strategy to scale up efforts to systematically address HIV-TB co-infection,” Sampaio said. Between 12 million and 15 million people are infected with both HIV and TB, or about one-third of all people living with HIV, Sampaio said. The disease is among the leading killers of people with HIV, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).