Yahoo – AFP,
Richard Ingham, 22 Oct 2014
A poster
hangs on a wall at Nhlangano health center to aimed at encouraging people
to
get tested for HIV and TB on October 27, 2009 (AFP Photo/Stephane de Sakutin)
|
Paris (AFP)
- The known tally of people with tuberculosis rose last year but overall
"major progress" is being made in rolling back the disease, the World
Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday.
"The
2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halting and reversing TB incidence
has been achieved globally, in all six WHO regions and in most of the 22 high
TB-burden countries," it said.
More effort
is needed, though, it said: "The death toll from the disease is still
unacceptably high."
Patients
wait to be attended at the
Tuberculosis wing of Mbagathi district
hospital in
Nairobi, Kenya on October 17,
2014 (AFP Photo/Tony Karumba)
|
The total
marked an increase from 2012, but only because the first detailed figures were
now available for Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, and some other
countries.
In 2012, an
estimated 8.6 million people worldwide were infected with TB and 1.3 million
lives were lost, according to last year's report.
"These
large numbers of TB cases and death notwithstanding, 21 years on from the...
declaration of TB as a global public health emergency, major progress has been
made," said the update.
"Globally,
the TB mortality rate (deaths per 100,000 people per year) has fallen by 45
percent since 1990 and TB incidence (new cases per 100,000 people per year) are
decreasing in most parts of the world."
The report
added: "TB is slowly declining each year and it is estimated that 37
million lives were saved between 2000 and 2013 through effective diagnosis and
treatment."
Good news
includes new diagnostic tools to get patients on to treatment faster, and more
investment in drug research and development.
"For
the first time in four decades, new TB drugs are starting to emerge from the
pipeline, and combination regimens that include new compounds are being tested
in clinical trials," the report said.
"There
are several TB vaccines in Phase I or Phase II trials. For the time being,
however, a vaccine that is effective in preventing TB in adults remains
elusive."
The report
turned the spotlight on the campaign against multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB --
strains that thwart frontline antibiotics and are extremely expensive to treat.
The
proportion of new MDR TB cases was stable last year at 3.5 percent, though
"much higher levels of resistance and poor treatment outcomes are of major
concern in some parts of the world," it said.
Of last
year's nine million new TB cases, India accounted for 24 percent and China for
11 percent.
A quarter
were in African, which also had the highest death rates.
UN goals
The MDG set
by UN members in 2000 is a broad goal of reversing the disease by 2015.
The WHO
later set a tougher target under its 2006-2015 "Stop TB" strategy:
deaths and prevalence rates should be halved from 1990 levels by the end of
2015.
By the end
of 2013, the fall was around 45 and 41 percent respectively, so "progress
needs to accelerate," the WHO said.
To fight TB
successfully, $8 billion (6.24 billion) is needed every year, it said. Funding
in 2014 was $6.3 billion.
In 2013,
treating a patient with conventional TB cost between $100 and $500, while
MDR-TB cost an average $9,235 in poor countries but $48,553 in upper
middle-income countries.
The MDGs
will be supplanted by Sustainable Development Goals due to be finalised next
September.
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