TB Care Will Save 500,000 Lives in Africa-Experts

As many as half a million lives could be saved every year in Africa if governments combine their approach to tackle a rampant AIDS epidemic with measures to treat tuberculosis, health experts said on Tuesday.

Campaigners meeting in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa this week said tuberculosis is a major killer for people living with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, but few people on the continent are receiving the care they need to treat the illness.”If we jointly tackle TB and HIV, we can be much more effective in controlling both diseases,” said Peter Piot, executive director of the United Nations AIDS body, UNAIDS, in a joint statement issued with the World Health Organization.Activists urged health services to expand access to TB treatment for AIDS sufferers, as well as use existing programs to control tuberculosis to detect HIV cases and provide sufferers with life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs.The statement said that of an estimated 25 million Africans now living with HIV, about eight million also harbor the bacillus that causes TB, a chronic lung infection.Each year, between five and 10 percent of these eight million people will also develop active TB. Without effective treatment most die within months.Despite the deadly combined effects of the diseases, national health programs in Africa are only treating fewer than half of HIV-positive people in the grip of TB infection, despite the low cost of the treatment at about $10 per person.Few TB patients are offered an HIV test, and even fewer gain access to anti-retrovirals (ARVs) to treat the virus on the continent worst affected by the disease.”As we scale up efforts to increase access to ARVs in Africa we must simultaneously help people living with HIV survive their episodes with tuberculosis,” said Jack Chow, Assistant Director-General of the World Health Organization.”This is one of the most effective ways we can help save lives in Africa.”Former South African president Nelson Mandela highlighted the need for more help for HIV-positive people suffering from TB at an international AIDS conference in Bangkok in July, when he said TB is too often a death sentence for people with AIDS. (Source: Reuters, Sept 2004)