Nigeria: TB Epidemic Imminent - WHO

[Gert van der Hoek]

Nigeria: TB Epidemic Imminent - WHO

Daily Trust (Abuja)

6 February 2008

Ruby Rabiu


The World Health Organisation (WHO) Monday warned that if immediate action was not taken to control and monitor tuberculosis (TB) in the country, it would be faced with an epidemic capable of killing thousands of people.

The Country Representative of WHO, Dr Peter Eriki, gave the warning during the official donation of 262,000 tablets of 480mg Co-trimoxazoles, 65,500 Stat Pak, 65,520 Determine and 7,200 double check gold HIV test kits for TB patients to the Minister of Health.


Eriki who lamented the way and manner TB cases were being handled, said "HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis are the major public health problems in Nigeria with the country ranking 3rd and 4th in terms of the burden of the two diseases respectively world wide'.

Eriki added that the nation stand the risk of having the resistant type of tuberculosis if it continues to mismanage the treatment of the disease in the country.

"The rapid growth of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) epidemic in high burden countries like Nigeria has resulted in an equally dramatic rise in the estimated number of new tuberculosis," he said.

Eriki described tuberculosis as the leading killer of people living with HIV/AIDS, adding that WHO has made a donation of N15.8million.

He urged the minister to take immediate action to clear some drugs at the Lagos sea ports to ensure that they get to the end users on time.

"It is very important for the ministry to ensure that machinery is put in place to realise immediate and timely clearing of this consignment on arrival," he said.

He said that for the country to receive another consignment from the donors, they would have to promise to clear the goods immediately it arrives the ports for onward distribution to the patients.

Receiving the drugs, Minister of Health, Prof Adenike Grange, said the WHO should do more to assist the country strengthen the health system, which she described as very weak.

Grange said because of the lapses, Nigeria recently recorded an outbreak of diseases in several parts of the country and asked for assistance and understanding from drug donors with the peculiar situation found in Nigeria.

She promised to clear the drugs as soon as they arrive but solicited assistance in order to monitor and evaluate the implementation of all health programmes.

She regretted the fact that the ministry was unable to provide statistics of people living with the tuberculosis disease and how many people the drugs would cater for.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200802060168.html

 

[wdcare]

Re: Nigeria: TB Epidemic Imminent - WHO

http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnN26339284.html

Drug-resistant TB seen at record levels globally - WHO
Tue 26 Feb 2008, 19:11 GMT

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Cases of tuberculosis that defy existing drugs are being recorded globally at the highest rates ever seen, with parts of the former Soviet Union especially vulnerable, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

In a report based on data from 81 countries, the WHO estimated nearly half a million people a year worldwide become infected with a form of TB resistant to two or more of the primary drugs used to treat it. That number accounts for about 5 percent of the 9 million new TB cases annually.

Extensively drug-resistant TB, the form that is hardest to treat, was seen in 45 countries and may be present in others because only extremely limited data was available from Africa, the U.N. health agency said.

"This is my frustration here -- the world is not taking this epidemic seriously," Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO Stop TB Department, said in a telephone interview. "What the report shows is simply that we are in big trouble in many parts of the world."

Parts of the former Soviet Union -- Russia, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Ukraine -- were among the countries hit hardest by drug-resistant TB. Raviglione attributed this to years of socioeconomic deterioration, dismantling of public health systems, poor living conditions and other factors.

Tuberculosis is an infectious bacterial disease typically attacking the lungs. The emergence and spread of drug-resistant germs makes treating it much harder and could make the disease, which has killed people for untold centuries, even more deadly. An estimated 1.6 million people a year die from TB worldwide.

The report tracked multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, called MDR-TB, and XDR-TB. MDR-TB does not respond to the treatment by two or more of the primary drugs used to combat TB. XDR-TB is the most dangerous form of TB. It is resistant to nearly all drugs used to treat TB.

The report said 489,139 MDR-TB cases emerged in 2006. Raviglione estimated that perhaps 40,000 of these are XDR-TB.

The highest rate of MDR-TB was recorded in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, where 22 percent of all new TB cases were reported as multidrug-resistant. That's the highest proportion ever recorded in any population, Raviglione said.

MDR-TB also was unusually common in Moldova (19 percent of new TB cases) as well as parts of Ukraine, Russia and Uzbekistan, the WHO report showed. MDR-TB also may be widespread in China, according to the report.

The study, the first big WHO report on TB since 2004 and the first to track XDR-TB, said progress had been made in Estonia and Latvia, which were identified in the 1990s as hot spots for drug-resistant TB...

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Nigeria: TB Epidemic Imminent - WHO

(Versions of these stories are showing on google health stories)

WHO Says Drug-Resistant TB Spreads Fast

By MARIA CHENG ? 1 hour ago

LONDON (AP) ? Drug-resistant tuberculosis is spreading even faster than medical experts had feared, the World Health Organization warned in report issued Tuesday.

The rate of TB patients infected with the drug-resistant strain topped 20 percent in some countries, the highest ever recorded, the U.N. agency said.

"Ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable to see rates like this," said Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of WHO's "Stop TB" department. "This demonstrates what happens when you keep making mistakes in TB treatment."

Though the report is the largest survey of drug-resistant TB, based on information collected between 2002 and 2006, there are still major gaps: Data were only available from about half of the world's countries.

In Africa, where experts are particularly worried about a lethal collision between TB and AIDS, only six countries provided information.

"We really don't know what the situation is in Africa," Raviglione said. "If multi-drug resistant TB has penetrated Africa and coincides with AIDS, there's bound to be a disaster."

Raviglione said it was likely that patients ? and even entire outbreaks of drug-resistant TB ? were being missed.

Experts also worry about the spread of XDR-TB, or extensively drug-resistant TB, a strain virtually untreatable in poor countries. When an XDR-TB outbreak was identified in AIDS patients in South Africa in 2006, it killed nearly every patient within weeks. WHO's report said XDR-TB has now been found in 45 countries.

Globally, there are about 500,000 new cases of drug-resistant TB every year, about 5 percent of the 9 million new TB cases. In the United States, 1.2 percent of TB cases were multi-drug resistant. Of those, 1.9 percent were extensively drug-resistant.

The highest rates of drug-resistant TB were in eastern Europe. Nearly a quarter of all TB cases in Baku, Azerbaijan, were drug-resistant, followed by about 20 percent in Moldova and 16 percent in Donetsk, Ukraine, WHO said.

High rates of drug-resistant TB were also found in China and India, the world's two most populous nations that together are home to half the world's cases.

Drug-resistant TB arises when primary TB treatment is poor. Countries with strong treatment programs, like the U.S. and other Western nations, should theoretically have very little drug-resistant TB.

That is not the case in China, however, where the government says 94 percent of TB patients complete their first TB treatment.

"There's a huge, gross discrepancy there if they are then reporting 25 percent of the world's multi-drug resistant TB cases," said Mark Harrington, executive director of Treatment Action Group, a public health think tank. "They are clearly nurturing a multi-drug resistant TB epidemic and failing to report XDR-TB at all."

With growing numbers of drug-resistant TB patients, there is concern some national health systems will soon be overwhelmed.

"We are totally off track right now," said Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer, executive director of Medecins Sans Frontiere's Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. He said only 30,000 multi-drug TB resistant patients were treated last year.

Experts said new drugs are needed if the outbreak is to be curbed, along with new diagnostic tests to identify drug-resistant TB strains faster ? current tests take about a month for results.

WHO said a new diagnostic test able to provide results within a day is being tried in South Africa and Lesotho. If successful, the test could be introduced across Africa in a few months, though new labs would be needed to run the tests.

"Multi-drug resistant TB is a threat to every person on the planet," Harrington said. "It's not like HIV, where you are only infected through specific actions. TB is a threat to every person who takes a train or a plane."
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