Access to new test for drug-resistant TB must be improved: WHO expert

A World Health Organization expert called for greater access to a new diagnostic tool for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in the Western Pacific and southeast Asia.  The new diagnostic tool reduces the time needed to detect MDR-TB from eight weeks to two hours.

Drug-resistant TB emerges when patients fail to follow treatment regimens, take substandard drugs or stop treatment too early.  Patients with MDR-TB can then transmit the disease to others.

According to the WHO, there are 120,000 new cases of MDR-TB in the Western Pacific each year, which makes up 28 percent of the global caseload.  Combined with cases in southeast Asia, all MDR-TB cases in Asia make up 58 percent of the global caseload.

Number of drug-resistant TB cases, 2007

• India – 131,000
• China – 112,000
• Russia – 43,000
• Bangladesh – 15,000
• South Africa – 16,000

TB killed 1.8 million people across the world in 2008, or a person every 20 seconds. It is not only a scourge in poor countries but also in the West, where it has flared anew in the last 20 years because of AIDS, which weakens the immune system.