WHO urges global TB prevention

Malta is one of the few countries in the world where no new patients tested showed resistance to any tuberculosis drugs, according to a World Health Organisation report.

Tuberculosis patients in parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia are 10 times more likely to have multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) than in the rest of the world, according to the report into the deadly infectious disease.

The WHO yesterday released its third report on drug-resistant tuberculosis, a more deadly form of the disease, which can cost up to 100 times more to cure than normal TB.

The report is the largest survey of its kind ever conducted, covering 20 per cent of the world's population.

While the worst incidence of drug-resistant TB was found in the Baltic countries and the former Soviet Union, cases were also identified in every other region of the world.

Six out of the top 10 global hotspots are Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, parts of the Russian Federation and Uzbekistan, with drug resistance in new patients as high as 14 per cent.

"Passport control will not halt drug resistance; investment in global TB prevention will," said Mario Raviglione, the director of WHO's Stop TB Department.

WHO's leading infectious disease experts estimate there are 300,000 new cases per year of MDR-TB worldwide.

There is also new evidence proving that drug-resistant strains are becoming more resistant and unresponsive to current treatments. Nearly 80 per cent of MDR-TB cases are now "super strains", resistant to at least three of the four main drugs used to cure TB.

Though curing 'normal' TB is cheap and effective - a six month course of medicines costs US$10 - treating drug-resistant TB is a hundred times more expensive. Even then a cure is not guaranteed. With no effective vaccine, everyone is vulnerable to infection simply by breathing in a droplet carrying a virulent drug-resistant strain, according to WHO.

The report says that the most effective strategy to prevent the emergence of drug resistance is through implementation of the so-called Dots - an internationally agreed treatment strategy designed to ensure patients take their medicines properly.