30 May 2007
World Partnership Helping To Stop Spread of Tuberculosis
United States applauds Stop TB Partnership’s work to eliminate disease
Washington -- A worldwide partnership to stop the spread of tuberculosis (TB) is achieving success.
In a new report released May 29, a global network of more than 500 groups called the Stop TB Partnership said it has treated more than 10 million people in 78 countries in the past six years. This means, the group said, that anti-TB drugs are getting to the people who need them.
The partnership was founded in 2000 as part of the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO). The group’s goal is to eradicate TB as a public health issue by 2050.
Kent Hill, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) assistant administrator for global health, said that treating 10 million people for TB is “a significant accomplishment and an excellent example of what strong commitment and coordinated action can achieve.” USAID provides between $5 million and $6 million each year to the TB partnership.
Hill said USAID is “fully committed to ensuring that TB patients have access to high-quality care,” that they complete their treatment for the disease and that there is continued investment in new TB drugs and “diagnostics,” the tools to help researchers learn the nature of diseases by means of their symptoms or signs.
Irene Koek, chief of USAID’s Infectious Diseases Division, serves as chair of the coordinating board of the Stop TB Partnership. Another board member is Kenneth Castro, director of the tuberculosis elimination division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Marcos Espinal, the partnership’s executive secretary, told USINFO May 29 that treating 10 million people for TB is a wise investment of the public’s money. He said society benefits when TB patients -- most often people between ages 15 and 49 -- get well and can become productive members of the work force.
Espinal said his partnership is the first group to treat so many people for TB in so many countries. He said his group’s focus is to help especially 22 of the “high-burden” TB countries that generate 80 percent of the estimated 9 million new cases of the disease every year. Espinal said these countries are spread all over the world -- including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Uganda, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
Ensuring that people complete their TB treatment is “the only way to break the back” of the TB epidemic and “also the best weapon we have for preventing a potentially massive new epidemic of drug-resistant TB,” said Espinal.
He said his group is “moving steadily” toward its target of treating 50 million TB patients between 2006 and 2015.
EPIDEMIC HAS LEVELED OFF, BUT REMAINS MAJOR KILLER
WHO announced in March that the TB epidemic had leveled off for the first time since the agency declared TB a public health emergency in 1993.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement following WHO’s announcement that the vast majority of TB cases are cured. He added that over the past decade, 26 million patients have been placed on effective TB treatment, “thanks to the efforts of governments and a wide range of partners.” But he lamented that the disease still claims the lives of about 4,400 people each day and some 1.6 million people a year.
The Stop TB Partnership’s new report, called 10 Million Treatments in Six Years, said its drug-supply arm, called the Global Drug Facility, ensures that its targeted low-income population receives treatment by providing life-saving TB-preventive drugs free of charge to underprivileged patients.
Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said his group and the Stop TB Partnership together provide countries with financing and drugs that ensure better-run treatment programs and a continuous drug supply so that more patients can be cured of TB.
The United States is the single largest donor to the Global Fund, a public-private organization created in 2002 to accelerate the fight against AIDS, TB and malaria.
President Bush announced May 30 he will ask the U.S. Congress to double U.S. help to AIDS patients worldwide by providing $30 billion over five years toward that effort. Bush first announced in 2003 a five-year, $15 billion plan to complement the continued U.S. commitment to the Global Fund. (See related article.)
The full text (PDF, 16 pages) of Stop TB Partnership’s report and its list of the 22 “high-burden” countries for TB are available on the group’s Web site.
For additional information on U.S. policy, see Health.
