TB – the hopes and fears

The World Health Organisation is pleased to announce that in 15 years, 8 million lives have been saved as a result of the DOTS strategy against TB. However, this disease still remains the most deadly after HIV/AIDS. In 2008, it killed 1.8 million people!

Fifteen years of investment in fighting TB have produced concrete results in terms of human lives saved, explains Dr Marion Raviglione, Director of the WHO’s Stop-TB department. But current progress is still too slow for us to expect to achieve our aim of eliminating tuberculosis.

Millions of people still do not have access to quality healthcare. The association between TB and HIV/AIDS also continues its onslaught. Although the number of TB patients who underwent HIV screening increased between 2007 and 2008, the levels are still far from what they should be. Of the 1.8 million people who died from TB in 2008, more than 500,000 of them were HIV positive.

And multi-resistant and ultra-resistant forms of TB are proving to pose a growing threat. Out of an estimated half a million cases of MRTB per year, 30,000 are officially notified and we know for certain that 6,000 were treated in 2008, states the WHO. It hopes to increase this figure fivefold in 2010.