"Fifteen years of TB investments are bringing visible results in terms of human lives saved," said Director of the WHO Stop TB Department Mario Raviglione. "Together, national programmes, WHO, UNAIDS, the Global Fund and other partners have helped save millions of lives from TB."
WHO attributes the success to Directly Observed Therapy, Short-course (DOTS), which was first developed in 1994 and later incorporated into the WHO Stop TB Strategy as its main component.
DOTS is a rigorous approach to tuberculosis treatment combining political commitment for increased and sustained financing, quality diagnosis and detection, standardized treatment with supervision and patient support, a secure drug supply and management system, a monitoring and evaluation system that measures impact.
The latest WHO update also shows continued progress on addressing the lethal combination of tuberculosis and HIV, with 200,000 more tuberculosis patients tested for HIV between 2007 and 2008, bringing the total tested to1.4 million. Of those who tested HIV positive, one-third benefited from life-saving HIV anti-retroviral therapy (ART).
"But the current pace of progress is far from sufficient to decisively target our goal of TB elimination," stressed Dr. Raviglione.
In 2008, 1.8 million people died from tuberculosis, including half a million deaths associated with HIV, and many of those people were not enrolled on ART. Tuberculosis remains second only to HIV/AIDS in the number of people it kills.
"It is a disease that destroys lives, damages families and stifles development," said Dr. Raviglione. "Without help to fill the $2 billion funding gap for TB care and control in 2010, the most vulnerable people will continue to miss the benefits so many others have seen."
Tuberculosis is an infectious bacterial disease which commonly affects the lungs and is transmitted from person to person via droplets from the throat and lungs of people with the active respiratory disease. The symptoms of active tuberculosis are coughing, sometimes with sputum or blood, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever and night sweats.
Source: UN News
Global 
-
-
-
U.S. President Barack Obama's top Russia adviser has said that diplomats from Washington and Moscow will likely meet in the coming weeks to work on a new UN Security Council draft resolution targeting the Syrian government over its bloody crackdown on antigovernment protesters. more
-
More than 500 protesters have gathered in Moscow's Pushkin Square to demand more government funding for science and scientists in Russia. more
-
Anders Hjemdahl of the Stockholm-based Institute for Information on the Crimes of Communism talked to RFE/RL about why Western Europeans seem to know so little about the communist past. more
-
The Paris prosecutor's office has dropped an investigation into a French writer's claim that former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her. more
-
A prominent member of a Russian anarchist street-art collective who faced jail for overturning a police car has had the charges against him lifted. more
-
The Slovak parliament has approved expanding the powers of the European Union's bailout fund. more
-
A Prague court has ruled that former Belarusian presidential candidate Ales Mikhalevich should not be extradited to Belarus. more
Comments
|
Popular Right Now
Popular Commentary
New Reports
New World News
 Singer Whitney Houston, dead at 48Sundered by drug abuse and a slumping career, the talented and once beautiful Whitney Houston has passed away. - Pakistan: Short stories in Punjabi, to promote Christian values and common good
Fr. Mukhtar Alam has published a volume of stories of his mother. Stories that give "light" to those who are in the "dark" and teach the common good. At presentation, near the cathedral of Faisalabad, intellectuals, writers and leaders of the Church of Pakistan Muslim.
- Hong Kong: Hong Kong, jobs emergency: workers shortage by 2018
One government study confirms need for 14 thousand workers by 2018 to maintain economic growth at current levels. Behind this there are restrictive policies on birth control imposed by Beijing and the decision not to give citizenship to those born in the Territory.
- Myanmar: Monk Gambira, leader of the Saffron Revolution, free again
The authorities had yesterday detained him "for questioning". First released only a month ago, Gambira has spent the past three years in prison for leading protests by monks against the Burmese government.
- India: Karnataka: Jesuits and schools targeted by Hindu nationalists
Three attacks since 2011 at St. Joseph's PU College, Anekal. The religious are accused of not having displayed the national flag on Republic Day, but the president has always denied this. Silence of police and authorities. Sajan George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC): ...
|
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
Google+