The new face of TB: drug resistance and HIV
Date: 3.7.2007
Tuberculosis (TB) is back with a vengeance and it has a new face: the combination of the HIV epidemic with new strains of the disease that are resistant to the existing drugs has seen new TB cases and TB-related deaths skyrocket in the last decade.
Mycobacterium TB, the bacterium that causes the disease, is ancient. But powerful antibiotics brought it under control in the developed world, scientists largely abandoned efforts to develop new drugs or diagnostics, donors stopped funding TB programmes and the global health community shifted its attention elsewhere.
The world, and sub-Saharan Africa in particular, is now paying the price. Very few countries in Africa have the technology to test for drug-resistant TB. Without sophisticated laboratory facilities, TB patients co-infected with HIV also present a diagnostic challenge.
In countries like Lesotho and Mozambique, lack of access to health services in remote, rural areas adds to the likelihood that large numbers of TB infections are going undetected and untreated, including cases of multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extremely drug-resistant (XDR) TB....
"checkbiotech":[ http://www.checkbiotech.org/orphan_News_treatmentandhealth.aspx?infoId=613]
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