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World health organizations have launched a call for action for World TB Day. Experts said the deadly disease could only be eradicated if funding for research increased.
Tuberculosis, a serious disease that affects the lungs, is the largest cause of infectious mortality of our time, causing more than 1.6 million deaths a year. Although it is possible to cure with antibiotics, multidrug-resistant forms of TB pose an increasingly difficult challenge in the fight against the disease.
The decline in mortality due to tuberculosis does not follow that of other infectious diseases such as HIV and malaria and the world is not about to achieve the goals of the disease. And the WHO, according to a report published in The lancet medical journal.
"We commemorate World TB Day this year with an urgent call to action because we can not lose this unique moment,"
Tereza Kasaeva, Director, WHO Global Tuberculosis Program
The UN Sustainable Development Goals aim to end AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria epidemics by 2030, while WHO targets a 95% reduction in TB mortality and a 90% reduction the incidence of tuberculosis in the world by 2035.
Global investments in research must be quadrupled to eradicate the disease, which affects about a quarter of the world's population, by 2045, says the Lancet report.
The WHO has issued new guidelines to improve the treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, recommending oral drug therapy, which, in its opinion, is more effective and results in fewer adverse side effects than treatments. current injectable medications.
The theme of this year's World Tuberculosis Day, March 24, is "It's Time to End Tuberculosis". Tereza Kasaeva, director of the WHO Global Tuberculosis Program, said that while WHO's goals for TB eradication were "ambitious," they were also "achievable and realistic."
"We commemorate World TB Day this year with an urgent call to action because we can not lose this unique moment," she said. SciDev.Net. "We have made very important commitments, it is now time to translate these commitments into concrete actions."
The first-ever United Nations High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis in 2018 set ambitious targets for treating 40 million people and preventing 30 million new cases between 2018 and 2022.
Kasaeva said research should now focus on prevention, especially for people under five and people living with HIV who are particularly vulnerable to the disease.
Global spending on tuberculosis research reached US $ 726 million in 2016, but the Lancet Tuberculosis Commission, compiled by experts from 13 countries, believes that much remains to be done to develop new methods of diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease.
Although current treatments were extended to 90% of people with TB and 90% were successfully cured, ongoing efforts would not have prevented 800,000 deaths in 2017, the report says.
The commission pointed out that investments also bring economic gains, the savings resulting from the prevention of deaths due to tuberculosis being estimated at three times the cost, or even more in the so-called "high burden" countries.
The top priority should be making available to all, including the poorest countries, diagnostic tests and high-quality treatments, the report said.
The co-author of the report, Michael Reid, from the University of California, San Francisco, USA, said that TB was "a problem that can be solved."
"We have fast and sensitive diagnostic tools and we promise powerful tuberculosis treatment strategies," he said. "In addition, TB control strategies, new health technologies … and the growing political momentum could all help bring tuberculosis to an end in a generation more easily than ever before."
Mel Spigelman, head of the US-based TB Alliance, said SciDev.Net this eradication was achievable "with the right combination of sustainable financing and political will".
"It starts by filling the funding gaps in treatment and research, as indicated by governments at the UN General Assembly High Level Meeting on Tuberculosis. last year, "he said. "Real follow-up is needed, especially by heavily affected countries that have more and more resources to invest in research and development."
According to estimates by the Lancet Commission, Bangladesh, Zambia, China and Indonesia have the capacity to increase by more than five times their annual expenditure on tuberculosis over the next five years.
Spigelman said research should focus on "one or more vaccines "and improved diagnoses to help identify the" missing million "that remains undiagnosed, as well as safer, more effective and more affordable treatments.
The BCG vaccine is partially effective in protecting infants and young children, but is less effective in protecting adults from pulmonary TB. Several new vaccines are under development.
He welcomed the WHO guidelines on oral medications as an alternative to TB treatment which he said may be "intolerable and debilitating", but warned that 18 to 20 months of treatment had implications for terms of cost and compliance.
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