Stopping TB

Gauteng MEC for Health and Social Development Qedani Mahlangu scores a goal against TB 

Millions of Tuberculosis (TB) deaths will be averted if the billions of dollars required to develop faster diagnostics, improved treatment regimens and the development of a vaccine is made available by donors, according to the new plan released by the World Health Organisation this week.

The Global Plan to Stop TB: Transforming the Fight Towards Elimination of Tuberculosis has calculated that at least U$37-billion is needed to fund TB from 2011 to 2015. A funding gap of about U$-14 billion - approximately $US 2.8 billion per year - will remain and needs to be filled by international donors.

The plan emphasises the need to develop newer and faster TB diagnostic tools that could help in getting a quicker TB diagnosis which could be used by trained staff. In most countries diagnosing TB still includes the old method of identifying TB bacteria from a person's sputum under the microscope. And there is still no vaccine able to prevent pulmonary TB, the most common form of the disease.

In addition to helping public health programmes adopt already existing modern diagnostic tests, the Global Plan sets a research agenda aimed at producing two new ‘while-you-wait' rapid tests that trained staff at even the most basic health outposts can use to diagnose TB accurately.

By 2015, the aim is for three new drug regimens - one for drug-sensitive TB and two for drug-resistant TB - to be going through Phase III clinical trials, the final step before drugs are released to market. Four vaccine candidates should be at the same stage of testing. Some of the Plan's targets include testing at least seven million people worldwide for drug resistant (DR) TB and for one million confirmed DR cases to be treated according to international standards over the next five years.

Half a million people die each year from HIV-associated TB. Provided the Plan's targets are met, by the end of 2015 all TB patients will be tested for HIV and, if the test is positive, receive anti-retroviral drugs and other appropriate HIV care. In HIV treatment settings, all patients will be screened for TB and receive appropriate preventive therapy or treatment as needed.

At least nine million people fall ill with active TB every year and two million lives are lost worldwide annually. South Africa is one of 22 countries bearing 80 percent of the TB burden globally. Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, Minister of Health said: "The Global Plan to Stop TB provides an urgently needed blueprint to cut global TB deaths by half."

He said South Africa had embarked on an ambitious plan to reduce the burden of TB. He said the country was committed to meeting the Global Plan's targets and urged world leaders "to invest in the plan which can help move us towards ridding the world of TB".

Dr Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organisation, called for urgent intervention to stop the preventable TB deaths.

"There is an urgent need to scale up action against TB - 10 million people, including four million women and children, will lose their lives unnecessarily between now and 2015 if we fail."

"TB control works, with global incidence of the disease declining since 2004, although much too slowly," said Chan. - Health-e News Service
 

Source: http://www.health-e.org.za/ 14.10.2010 Lungi Langa