TB rates level off after 14 years

A new report issued on Thursday by the World Health Organization (WHO) found that the rate of TB—the number of infections per 100,000 people—levelled off in 2005, the last year for which comprehensive data was available. The report was released ahead of World Tuberculosis Day on Saturday.

“This is a breakthrough,” said Marcos Espinal, the

executive secretary of WHO’s Stop TB Partnership. “It’s

the first time we’ve had

good news about the epidemic since 1993.”

Worldwide, the rate of

tuberculosis has stabilised at less than 150 cases per 100,000 people—although in Africa,

it is nearly 350 cases per 100,000 people.

But while the global rate remained relatively steady, the actual number of people with TB increased, due to growth in the world’s population. In 2005, there were 8.8 million new TB cases and 1.6 million deaths, WHO said.

The emergence of a deadly version of the disease, known as extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis or XDR-TB, has also complicated efforts.

XDR-TB is resistant to most drugs commonly used to treat TB and health experts are concerned that Africa’s high rates of HIV/AIDS will propel its spread.

The drug-resistant disease has also appeared in wealthy countries, with cases reported in all Group of Eight industrialised nations. In Africa, the disease has only been reported in South Africa. But experts said they suspect it is present, but undetected, in other African countries with weaker surveillance systems.

However, experts said that lack of access to existing treatments are a bigger killer worldwide than drug-resistant strains.

“Most people have tuberculosis that is sensitive to the drugs we use, but will die because of the failure to access the very simple, cheap treatment that we’ve been using for the last 40 years,” said Tom Ellman, a health adviser for the medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres Ellman.