'Two people die of TB every three minutes'

[Ronan Kelly]

'Two people die of TB every three minutes'
TNN 3 December 2009, 05:03am IST

CHANDIGARH: India is the highest tuberculosis (TB) burden country in the world, and its prevalence in 2008 has been estimated to be 3.8 million cases.

Every day, more than 5,000 people develop tuberculosis and nearly 1,000 people die, resulting in 2 deaths every 3 minutes.

This was stated by Ashok Kumar, secretary, department of pharmaceuticals, ministry of chemicals and fertilizers on Wednesday at a three-day seminar on ?Emerging Trends in the Diagnosis & Experimental Chemotherapy of Tuberculosis?, jointly organized by National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Mohali; department of pharmaceuticals, Government of India, and Harvard School of Public Health, US.

According to the latest estimates, Deliberating on the limitations of the present medicines, the secretary said, ?The presently used drugs are all fraught with several drawbacks, and have to be administered over six months or more. This usually leads to non-compliance and results in the emergence of drug-resistant strains.?

He also said that NIPER and Harvard will have an exchange programme for research scholars and masters students in the coming year and both e institutions will conduct seminars on different topics.

Presenting the keynote speech on ?Importance of Tuberculosis Research?, Barry Bloom, university service professor, Harvard School of Public Health, US said, ?Currently some 2.5 billion people are infected with tuberculosis, 10% will develop disease over a lifetime, 15-33% of AIDS patients die of TB and case fatality rate of untreated tuberculosis is 50%.?
Talking about the prevalance of tuberculosis in the country, he said, ?Around 80% of global tuberculosis is in 22 high burden countries, and India is the highest tuberculosis burden country. But India has made significant progress in this field since 1993.?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/Two-people-die-of-TB-every-three-minutes/articleshow/5293811.cms

[Missouriwatcher]

Re: 'Two people die of TB every three minutes'

"Mycobacterium tuberculosis can persist in the human host even after the development of an immune response. Following initial infection, M. tuberculosis actively divides within naive macrophages. As cell-mediated immunity develops, the bacteria stop replicating, but they can remain viable for years and reactivate, resulting in active disease."

http://mic.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/151/11/3803

WHO 2009:
Left untreated, each person with active TB disease will infect on average between 10 and 15 people every year. But people infected with TB bacilli will not necessarily become sick with the disease. The immune system "walls off" the TB bacilli which, protected by a thick waxy coat, can lie dormant for years. When someone's immune system is weakened, the chances of becoming sick are greater.

* Someone in the world is newly infected with TB bacilli every second.
* Overall, one-third of the world's population is currently infected with the TB bacillus.
* 5-10% of people who are infected with TB bacilli (but who are not infected with HIV) become sick or infectious at some time during their life. People with HIV and TB infection are much more likely to develop TB.

"Multidrug-resistant Tuberculosis (Mdr-Tb): Causes, Dangers, Treatment And Control.
Haemoplysis, spontaneous pneumothorax, pleural effusion, cardiopulmonary insufficiency (heart and lung disease resulting in (cor-pulomale), bronchiectasis, fibrosis of the lungs are some of the major complications of tuberculosis which can be experienced when there is MDR-TB." http://1990unecmedclass.com/tb.htm