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Tuberculosis Cases on Rise in Africa: UN Officials

Posted on: Saturday, 28 January 2006, 09:00 CST

Tuberculosis cases on rise in Africa: UN officials

NAIROBI, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) -- United Nations health officials warned Friday in Kenyan capital Nairobi that cases of tuberculosis in Africa are likely to double over the next 10 years because of the rapid spread of AIDS.

Speaking at the second launch of the Global Strategic Plan to Stop TB 2006-2015 in Nairobi, World Health Organization (WHO) officials said the two diseases had to be treated together as they are heavily interdependent, with TB a leading killer of people with AIDS.

WHO Regional Director for the Africa Luis Gomes Sambo said that more than half the sub-Saharan Africans infected with HIV -- which can cause AIDS -- go on to develop TB.

"Africa is the region with the highest TB burden and the least resources to deal with it. Nine of the twenty-two global TB high burden countries are in the region," Sambo said in speech read on his behalf by WHO Representative in Kenya Peter Eriki.

"In a number of countries in Southern and Eastern Africa including Kenya where this event is taking place, have continued to experience substantial rises in TB cases," he said.

Latest figures indicate that more than 25 million people in Africa are infected with the HIV virus and malaria kills some 7, 000 people every day in Africa.

The number of TB cases is growing by 10 percent a year in Africa and reached 3.3 million a year by 2005.

"It is also apparent that at the current rate, unless extra- ordinary efforts are undertaken and sustained, the 2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets for TB control will be difficult to achieve in the Africa region. These facts remain cause for great health concern," said Sambo.

Kenyan Health Assistant Minister, Enoch Kibunguchy said the killer disease poses a potential threat to the east African nation.

Kibunguchy said the disease has spiraled from about 10,000 cases a decade ago to more than 106,000 in 2005.

"It is estimated that in 2004 about 80,000 people may have died of TB in this country. Most of these deaths could have been prevented if people had full access to TB diagnosis and treatment services countrywide," said the assistant minister.

He called for the need to scale up efforts to curb the killer disease's spread particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where TB in combination with HIV has eroded health gains.

"In Kenya efforts are being made to bring TB under control through the pursuance of expansion and improvement of the quality of Direct Observed Therapy (DOTS) the approach that has been found to be most effective strategy for control of TB," Kibunguchy stressed.

The campaign, backed by more than 400 organizations worldwide, aims to treat 50 million people in the next 10 years.

The plan aims to implement one of the United Nations' Millennium Goals, which called for a halt in the spread of TB and progress in reducing incidences of the disease by 2015.

It hopes to spend about 47 billion U.S. dollars on TB treatment and control, and 9 billion on research and development.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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