Three of six world regions on track to reach TB-control targets: UN study

The Americas, south-east Asia and the western Pacific are on track to achieve targets for the control of tuberculosis (TB), though critical new challenges in Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe have pushed up worldwide rates, according to a report published today by the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO).

“There is clear evidence that investment in TB control works. Even in low-income countries with enormous financial constraints, programmes are operating effectively and producing results,” WHO Director-General Dr. Lee Jong-wook said, introducing the Global Tuberculosis Control 2006 report ahead of World TB Day, which is observed on 24 March.

“This same commitment needs to be replicated in African countries and other areas where funding and priority for TB control remains fragile.”

The targets set by the WHO for TB control comprise the detection of 70 per cent of TB cases and the successful treatment of 85 per cent of those cases by the end of 2005 – with final confirmation of those numbers by the end of this year.

The latest estimates released in the report suggest 1.7 million people died of the disease in 2004, with 8.9 million new cases that year and the number of cases per capita rising at one per cent per year globally.

The report attributes a TB resurgence in Africa in part to poor health systems and the complications of HIV co-infection. Eastern Europe, with its high prevalence of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), also continues to have an adverse impact on global treatment success rates.

The WHO report confirms, however, that 26 countries had already met the targets a year ahead of time, two of them being the high TB burden countries of the Philippines and Viet Nam. Five other high-burden countries – Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia and Myanmar – are expected to be confirmed, by the end of this year, to have reached the target.

WHO said that today’s report highlights the need for a much more rapid and vigorous response to the African crisis, including more ambitious plans backed up by more funding from governments and donors.

The agency added that the report is integral to the new six-point Stop TB Strategy, developed by WHO and published in the Lancet medical journal last week.

The Strategy builds on the TB-control approach known as DOTS, promoted by WHO to treat over 22 million patients since 1995, while also targeting the combined TB/HIV and drug-resistant MDR-TB strains of the disease.