The World Health Organisation has launched an ambitious plan for rich countries to sharply reduce tuberculosis infections and serve as a model for harder-hit countries of Africa and Asia, where the disease still thrives.
Although the 33 targeted countries, 21 of them in Europe [including Malta], have relatively low rates of infection, the disease still kills 10,000 people a year there – predominantly homeless people, migrants, prisoners, drug users, heavy drinkers or people with HIV/Aids – the WHO said.
It is in these communities that industrialised countries including the US could pilot approaches to a disease that is both preventable and curable that could then be transferred to poorer countries, Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO’s Global TB Programme, told a news briefing.
The goal is to reduce the infection rate by a factor of 10 to fewer than 10 new TB cases per million people per year by 2035 in each of the 33 countries, and to effectively eliminate it by 2050.
“We are after, really, finding what we call trailblazers or model countries that would embark in a resolute way on this campaign against tuberculosis, proving that it is indeed possible to get to elimination level,” Raviglione said.
TB still kills 10,000 people a year in rich countries
The disease, which is transmitted through the air, can take years to develop, and it is also vital to test as early as possible to determine if a person has a drug-resistant form.
Of the 155,000 annual new cases of tuberculosis in the target countries, about 500 are multi-drug resistant (MDR-TB), caused by an extreme superbug form of the bacterium that does not respond to the most powerful first-line drugs.
The WHO estimates that 8.6 million people developed TB in 2012 and 1.3 million died. Some 450,000 fell ill with dangerous superbug strains. Up to two million people may be infected with drug-resistant TB by 2015, it says.
Belarus and parts of Russia had high rates of MDR, which Raviglione called a “disaster situation”. Migrants from countries of the former Soviet Union who carry the infection could pose a threat to Western Europe, he added.
About 12 promising vaccines are being tested,mostly by US or Uk companies, and some could be on the market by 2022.