WHO Announces New Global TB Strategy

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WHO Announces New Global TB Strategy By THOMAS WAGNER, AP, Mar 16

LONDON - The World Health Organization announced a new strategy on

Friday to fight the global tuberculosis epidemic and urged

governments to donate more money to help WHO meet its goal of

reducing TB's prevalence and its daily death toll of 5,000.

WHO said its greatest challenges remain the spread of TB among

HIV-infected people in Africa and a multidrug-resistant form of TB,

especially in former Soviet provinces in Eastern Europe.

The new Stop TB Strategy, published in Friday's issue of the Lancet

medical journal, was developed during meetings with international

health professions over a two-year period.

It refines an earlier 1995 WHO tuberculosis strategy and is part of

an ambitious action plan that the U.N. organization announced last

month, aimed at treating 50 million people for the contagious lung

infection, halving TB prevalence and death rates, and saving 14

million lives between now and 2015. The ambitious plan hopes to raise

US$56 billion (euro46.7 billion) to fight TB.

The strategy's goals include providing high-quality medical services

to the world's poorest areas and promoting research for new

diagnostics, drugs and vaccines aimed at fighting TB.

" The Stop TB strategy aims to ensure access to care for all TB

patients, to reach our goals for 2015 and to reduce the burden of TB

worldwide, " Dr. Reviglione, the director of WHO's Stop TB

Department, said at a joint WHO and Lancet news conference.

TB is the world's deadliest curable, infectious disease. Each year

there are 8.9 million new TB cases, 1.7 million people die of the

ailment, 90 percent of them in developing countries. China and India

alone account for 35 percent of all estimated new TB cases each year.

Many developed countries seem to be winning the battle against

tuberculosis, but the incidence of global TB is still growing by 1

percent a year because of a rapid rise in Africa.

Many of the people suffering TB-HIV or multidrug-resistant TB are

poor and lack adequate medical treatment. When properly diagnosed, TB

requires a six-month course of drugs, which must be taken properly.

The Lancet issue contains 10 essays about TB from scientists around

the world, and Professor Ali Zumla, an infectious diseases specialist

at the University College London, who helped review them, said they

reflect a new optimism about fighting the disease.

" Six years ago, there was a picture of doom and gloom. Too many

people were dying of TB and there were few resources. At that point,

the Stop TB Partnership organized politicians, scientists and

operational workers in an international effort, " he said.

Today, as the Lancet articles indicate, positive scientific

developments also are taking place in the field, including six

vaccines that have moved into phase one and phase two studies,

increasing the hope that there may one day be an effective TB

vaccine, Zumla said.

" New drugs are being developed at the moment, new rapid diagnostic

tests for TB are being tried out in the field, and Bill Gates has

pledged to triple his foundation's funding for eradicating

tuberculosis to a total of US$900 (euro750) million by 2015, " the

professor said.

But he said there still isn't enough money available for research in

the field because the European Union and member countries such as

Germany and Britain were giving " paltry " amounts of money for TB

research. " It's about time they woke up, " he said.

One of the Lancet articles said pharmaceutical companies are now

investing in anti-tuberculosis drug research for the first time in 30

years.

Reviglione said WHO's Global Plan to Stop TB will need to raise US$56

billion (euro46.7 billion) to meet its 2015 goals regarding

tuberculosis, and that may not be easy to achieve.

But he said about US$25 billion (euro21 billion) should be available

over the next few years if governments continue to spend what they

have on TB and other organizations carry out their pledges.

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