http://www.boston.com/dailynews/135/world/U_N_health_agency_says_TB_can_:.shtml

U.N. health agency says TB can be licked 'cheaply'

By Alexander G. Higgins, Associated Press, 5/15/2001 17:47

GENEVA (AP) The U.N. health agency has mapped out a plan that can stop the spread of tuberculosis ''relatively cheaply'' in the 22 hardest-hit countries, a spokesman said Tuesday.

''We need less than half a billion dollars a year to confront the TB epidemic adequately and successfully,'' said Gregory Hartl, spokesman for the World Health Organization.

He said WHO would be presenting the detailed plan later this week to its 191 member nations, who are gathered in Geneva for their annual meeting.

''We have mapped out a detailed blueprint to bring the TB epidemic under control,'' Hartl told The Associated Press.

The plan gives hope to efforts to combat HIV/AIDS and malaria, the other two major infectious, killer diseases, Hartl said.

''This shows that it is possible,'' he said.

The Boston Globe reported Tuesday that the WHO report would promise to bring the global threat of tuberculosis under control within five years for no more than $400 million a year, in addition to what is now spent.

''We've gone into great detail,'' Hartl said. ''It shows that national governments have the ability to confront large infectious disease epidemics, working with WHO and the international community.''

The plan adds detail to a WHO campaign launched in March to fight the AIDS-fueled spread of TB by providing high-quality drugs to 10 million patients in the hardest-hit countries.

WHO says TB kills 2 million people every year and is the world's leading curable infectious killer.

The new plan increases the fund-raising target initially announced by WHO, which said in March that it would try to raise $50 million a year for the next five years to provide drug treatment to developing countries.

WHO has forecast 10.2 million new cases of TB annually by 2005 if nothing is done to stop the disease.

Even though treatment is cheap, every day 20,000 people develop active TB and 5,000 die from the disease, WHO says.

A half-year of treatment costs as little as $10 per patient, the organization says. But without treatment, 70 percent of people with tuberculosis will die.

WHO said the global tuberculosis epidemic increased 6 percent between 1997 and 1999, largely because of a steep rise in infections in African countries where the HIV/AIDS epidemic has lowered resistance.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2001