Speaking before the beginning of this week's high-level AIDS summit, UN officials on Monday called for more attention to the concurrent AIDS and TB epidemics plaguing many parts of the world.
The call to action represents "the next inevitable step if we really want to control these two epidemics, because if we don't do it, the economic, social, and human rights situation will be much worse than it is today," said Jorge Sampaio, who is the UN's special envoy for TB and a former president of Portugal.
A particular focus of attention is the spread of drug-resistant TB. Dr. Kevin De Cock, chief of the World Health Organization's HIV effort, warned that drug-resistant TB "has the potential to change how health care workers look at the issue of AIDS care." While workers may accept the modest risk of contracting HIV via contact with blood and needles, "it is quite another thing if you are at risk by sharing air with patients" who are co-infected with HIV and highly drug-resistant TB, De Cock said.
Some people whose HIV infection is kept in check by antiretrovirals are failing to receive the drugs that could cure nonresistant TB, warned Dr. Mario Raviglione, WHO's TB control director. In 2006, only 22 percent of TB patients in Africa and 12 percent worldwide were also tested for HIV. More recently, however, there have been signs of progress. The percentage of TB patients tested for HIV in Kenya rose from 19 in 2004 to 70 in 2007; from 25 to 83 in Malawi; and from zero to 89 in Rwanda, Raviglione said.
Worldwide, at least 700,000 HIV patients develop TB each year, and TB will kill an estimated 230,000 of them.
06/10/08
GLOBAL: Spread of Tuberculosis Seen Slowing Progress on AIDS
Source: New York Times:: Lawrence K. Altman; Courtesy of the CDC National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention