Tuberculosis control efforts fall far short, WHO warns

Must be a massive scale-up of efforts, or countries will continue to run behind this deadly epidemic, WHO director general says.

Governments need to get their heads out of sand, realize TB is not a disease consigned to 1800s: MSF

Thomson Reuters Posted: Oct 13, 2016 10:21 AM EDT | Last Updated: October 13, 2016

Kashmiri women, their faces covered with scarves, sit at the Chest Disease Hospital on World Tuberculosis Day in Srinagar, India, last March. The TB burden is actually higher than previously estimated, according to a new report. (Mukhtar Khan/Associated Press)

Health authorities worldwide needto move much faster to prevent, detect and treat a "deadlyepidemic" of tuberculosis if they are to reduce TB infectionsand deaths by 2030, the World Health Organization warned onThursday.

In its annual report on tackling TB, a highly contagiouslung disease which kills more people each year than HIV andmalaria combined, the WHO said progress had been dismal andcalled for "bold political commitment and increased funding."

Without it, the world would continue to chase the epidemicrather than get on top of it, it said.

"The dismal progress in the TB response is a tragedy for themillions of people suffering from this disease," the director ofthe WHO's TB programme, Mario Raviglione, said in a statement."To save more lives now, we must get newly recommended rapidtests, drugs and regimens to those who need them. Currentactions and investments fall far short of what is needed."

There were an estimated 10.4 million new TB cases worldwidein 2015, the report found, with six countries accounting for 60per cent of those first India, then Indonesia, China, Nigeria,Pakistan and South Africa.

Some 1.8 million people died from TB last year, of whom 0.4million were co-infected with the human immunodeficiency virus(HIV) that causes AIDS.

The report noted that while global TB deaths have fallen by22 per cent between 2000 and 2015, the disease was still one ofthe top 10 causes of death globally in 2015.

Greg Elder of the international medical charity MdecinsSans Frontires (MSF) said the figures constituted "a shockinglybad report card."

"Countries are failing to diagnose and treat millions ofpeople with TB," he said in a statement. "Governments need toget their heads out of the sand and realise that TB is not adisease consigned to the 1800s; we see and treat TB in ourclinics every day, and it's a deadly threat to all of us."

The WHO's Director General Margaret Chan said: "There mustbe a massive scale-up of efforts, or countries will continue torun behind this deadly epidemic."

The report warned of a widening gap between the financesneeded for TB care and prevention in poor and middle-incomecountries, and actual funds available. A $2-billion US shortfallnow, from some $8.3 billion needed for 2016, will widen to $6billion by 2020 if funding is not increased.

About 84 per cent of the TB funding available in low andmiddle-income countries in 2016 was domestic, but this wasmostly accounted for by the large and relatively wealthy BRICScountries Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Other less wealthy countries rely heavily on internationaldonor financing, with more than 75 percent coming from TheGlobal Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

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Action falling short to end tuberculosis epidemic, WHO

Tuberculosis control efforts fall far short, WHO warns

Governments need to get their heads out of sand, realize TB is not a disease consigned to 1800s: MSF

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