Disease experts called yesterday for decisive leadership and more research funding to fend off the “very real” risk of an untreatable strain of tuberculosis (TB) emerging as more and more people develop resistance to existing drugs.
In a series of papers in the Lancet medical journal to mark World TB Day yesterday, they warned that health systems risked being overwhelmed by increasing numbers of drug-resistant TB patients.
Already, more than 30 percent of newly diagnosed patients in parts of eastern Europe and central Asia have multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB, a form of the disease which does not respond to the two most potent drugs — isoniazid and rifampin.
Photo: EPA
There were believed to be about 630,000 MDR cases out of about 12 million TB cases in 2011.
Extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB, thus far reported in 84 countries, does not respond to an even wider range of drugs.
“The widespread emergence of XDR tuberculosis could lead to virtually untreatable tuberculosis,” wrote the authors of one study, led by Alimuddin Zumla, director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases and International Health at University College London Medical School.
“With ease of international travel and increased rates of MDR tuberculosis ... the threat and range of the spread of untreatable tuberculosis is very real,” they said.
EMERGENCY
TB was declared a global health emergency by the WHO 20 years ago, but remains a leading cause of death by an infectious disease.
On its Web site, the UN agency says at least US$1.6 billion is needed annually to prevent the spread of the disease. For their part, the study authors urged “a radical change in political and scientific thinking.”
“The global economic crisis and reduced investments in health services threaten national tuberculosis programs and the gains made in global tuberculosis control,” they wrote. “The world needs to acknowledge the serious threat of drug-resistant tuberculosis before it overwhelms health systems.”
Most needed are new drugs and better, quicker diagnostic tools. In 2011, 8.7 million people fell ill with TB and 1.4 million died, the WHO said.
More than 95 percent of TB deaths occur in low and middle-income countries, and it is among the top three causes of death for women aged 15 to 44.
In 2010, there were about 10 million orphans who had lost their parents to TB.
It is also a leading killer of people with HIV.
The death rate did drop by 41 percent between 1990 and 2011, according to the WHO, which says the world is on course to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of reversing the spread of TB by 2015.
“We have gained a lot of ground in TB, but it can easily be lost if we do not act now,” WHO Director General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍), said in a statement.
An airborne disease of the lungs, tuberculosis is usually treatable with a six-month course of antibiotics.
It is spread from person to person through the air and usually affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body such as the brain and kidneys.
BACTERIA
Resistance to TB drugs develops when treatment fails to kill the bacteria that causes it — either because the patient fails to follow their prescribed dosages or the drug does not work.
It can also be contracted through rare forms of the disease that are directly transmissible from person to person.
MDR TB in the US can cost as much as US$250,000 per patient to treat.
XDR TB requires about two years of treatment with even more expensive drugs that often cause side-effects and offer no guarantee of a cure.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not