UN health agency calls for free anti-TB drugs for HIV/AIDS victims

Noting that tuberculosis is the biggest killer of people with AIDS, the United Nations health agency today called for free anti-TB drugs (ATDs) and quality care to be made widely available to people living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, along with renewed efforts to increase access to anti-retrovirals (ARVs) in developing countries.

"Ten years after an unprecedented declaration of a global tuberculosis emergency by WHO, the TB epidemic has grown even worse, primarily due to the spread of HIV,” Mario Raviglione, acting director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Stop TB Department, said. “We need to increase our efforts to address the deadly synergy between the two diseases, each of which is fuelling the other's impact."

An estimated one third of the 42 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide are co-infected with tuberculosis. Approximately 90 per cent of people living with HIV die within a few months of becoming sick with TB if they do not receive proper treatment.

ATDs are a cocktail of medicines comprised of isoniazid, rifampicin, pyrazinamide and ethambutol that, when taken properly, are more than 95 per cent effective in curing tuberculosis regardless of a person's HIV status. ATDs cost only $10 per patient for the entire course of treatment.

In Africa, HIV is causing tuberculosis to spread so rapidly that TB treatment services cannot keep pace. HIV attacks the immune system, allowing the bacteria which causes TB to multiply and spread more easily. HIV is causing a 6 per cent annual increase in the number of TB cases across sub-Saharan Africa while tuberculosis treatment services are only expanding at a rate of 2 per cent.

Dr. Raviglione said the ATDs used with the proper TB treatment strategy made it possible to cure tuberculosis in over 80,000 Africans living with HIV last year. But more than 200,000 Africans with HIV died from TB because they had no access to ATDs and TB services.

An even greater TB/HIV crisis may be emerging in India, according to WHO. HIV is spreading rapidly in the country, which has the largest number of TB cases in the world. There are already 180,000 Indians living with HIV who are also infected with TB. Fortunately, the anti-TB programme in India is one of the most rapidly expanding programmes in the world.