The 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.