Helping fight the curable disease that continues to kill
Tuberculosis (TB) is a curable infectious disease that takes a deadly toll globally, particularly in developing countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 1.3 million people died of TB in 2007, while more than 9.27 million became infected, including nearly one million children. The global HIV/AIDS pandemic adds further treatment challenges. HIV-positive people, who are particularly susceptible to infection because of weak immune systems, accounted for nearly 1.37 million (15%) of TB deaths in 2007.
Further, there is an increasing emergence of multi drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), which no longer respond to the standard and most potent TB medicines. Drug resistance occurs primarily because of improper treatment of standard TB, but resistant strains are also being spread from person-to-person. WHO estimates there were more than half a million new infections of MDR-TB in 2007.
TB is a difficult disease to tackle, primarily because adequate diagnostic and treatment tools are severely lacking. MDR-TB is particularly difficult to both diagnose and treat, and is extremely costly factors which lead to a major treatment access gap. Because TB is generally considered a part of history in most industrialized countries, investment into research and development for better tools to fight the disease remains woefully inadequate.
UNITAID, together with its partners the Global Drug Facility (GDF) of the Stop TB Partnership, which supplies countries with TB medicines and diagnostics, the Green Light Committee, which focuses on providing countries with drugs to treat drug-resistant TB, and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM), is working to improve the global response to TB by:
- Helping expand access to quality-assured MDR-TB treatment and push for price reductions;
- Promoting the scale-up of MDR-TB diagnosis using new rapid diagnostic tests;
- Supporting the development of, and access to, child-friendly TB medicines; and
- Helping curb the emergence of resistant TB strains by ensuring that first-line TB treatment is readily accessible and available in countries.
