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WHO tackles drug-resistant TB in Europe

WHO-europe.gifThe World Health Organization (WHO) is launching a new programme that aims to slash soaring rates of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Europe.

Europe contains the top nine countries in the world for new cases of multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), which is impervious to the potent first-line antibiotics isoniazid and rifampicin. Meanwhile, cases of the much rarer extensively drug-resistant TB (characterized by additional resistance to quinolone drugs and a second-line antibiotic) nearly tripled, from 132 to 344, between 2008 and 2009. In London, for instance, cases of MDR-TB doubled between 2005 and 2009.

Of the 80,000 drug-resistant TB infections Europe sees each year, just a third are diagnosed and only a third of those cases are treated properly, says Ogtay Gozhlov, a medical officer at WHO’s European Regional Office in Copenhagen, Denmark. Patients who aren’t treated properly go on to spread TB to many more people. “It’s a vicious circle of disease spread,” Gozhlov says.


The WHO plan aims to diagnose 85% of drug-resistant TB cases in Europe and properly treat three-quarters of those cases by 2015. Its US$5 billion price tag will be paid for by the 53 member states in the European region of WHO as well as industry and non-profit organizations. The money will go to improved disease diagnosis, treatment and surveillance.

WHO estimates that, if successful, the plan will save 120,000 lives and prevent 263,000 cases of MDR-TB. Gozhlov says the plan is ready to be implemented, with a number of goals already set for the end of 2011. “Now it’s time for the countries to endorse this,” he says.

For more details on the plan, see this summary presented at a meeting this week in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Comments

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    gino francesco said:

    There is an evolutionary shift in m.tb making it antibiotic resistant.

    I regret to say that anybody who knows about tb will tell you that this WHO intiative, although well meaning, is a lost cause.

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    James Michael Howard said:

    The increase in resistant infectious organisms may be caused by a change in humans.

    It is my hypothesis that the “secular trend,” the increase in size and earlier puberty occurring in children, is caused by an increase in the percentage of individuals of higher testosterone. More specifically, I suggest this is due to an increase in the percentage of mothers of higher testosterone with time within the population. This exposes more fetuses to increased maternal testosterone with time within the population. This causes permanent effects in the fetus which persist throughout the life span. I suggest this is the cause of the parallel increases in morbidity occurring within the population, such as increased infection rates, obesity, cancer, breast cancer, diabetes, the metabolic syndrome, etc., including prematurity, small for gestational age, etc., including less obvious gross effects which later contribute to “failing schools” and other adverse behavioral outcomes in children.

    Testosterone is proven to reduce the immune response.

    The WHO, Tuberculosis Program, has reported a “secular trend” in TB in Western Europe (Bull World Health Organ. 1993; 71(3-4): 297–306)at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2393496/ .

    I suggest the ongoing rapid increase in TB and other infectious agents occurring in some areas, and throughout the world, is caused by an ongoing change in humans that is being ignored or is not noticed. That is, the rapid increase in antibiotic resistant TB in Western Europe is primarily caused by reduced immune response caused by increased testosterone within the population.

    James Michael Howard, Fayetteville, Arkansas, U.S.A.

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    John | Herpes Medication said:

    WHO is actually doing a nice work. They are so organized and can be found everywhere. However, they sometime over spend money instead of controlling their budget and looking at the economy at this time, the contributing nation will have to pay cough out a huge some of money at this difficult time.

    John Benjamin

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