We are losing the battle against tuberculosis says Medecins Sans Frontieres

Main Category: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses
Article Date: 01 Jun 2004 - 23:00 PDT

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The international humanitarian medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) today said that we are losing the battle against tuberculosis (TB) because we rely on archaic diagnostic tests and drugs. The HIV/AIDS pandemic has magnified this problem as TB often coincides with, and is made harder to treat by, HIV/AIDS. MSF calls for an urgent increase in worldwide investment in TB research and development.

"Delivering adequate TB care would require a reliable diagnostic test for TB to begin with, but we don't have one," said Dr. Rowan Gillies, president of MSF International, at the Stop TB Partners' Forum in New Delhi. "A growing number of TB patients worldwide also have HIV/AIDS, but the current diagnostic tool can only detect TB in 50% of HIV-patients even in a well-run TB program."

Diagnosis of children is particularly problematic as it mainly relies on detailing the symptoms and signs of TB, but can most often not be confirmed accurately.

Current first-line TB drugs were developed in the 1940s to 1960s. "We can't be satisfied with the TB treatment we and our colleagues in national TB programs have at our disposal today," said Olivier Brouant, head of mission for MSF's TB project in Mumbai. "A patient must take TB treatment daily during six to eight months - surely we can do better than this," Mr Brouant said. In addition, most easy-to-use fixed-dose combinations of TB drugs are not available in pediatric doses in many of the countries MSF works in.

Pharmaceutical companies are carrying out some R&D for TB, but they have generally disinvested themselves from antibacterial R&D. They cannot be relied on to bring a new TB drug to a market that mainly consists of people with very little purchasing power.

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