The global fight to curb tuberculosis has been slowed down during the last couple of years as the latest report of World Health Organisation (WHO) indicates. The report Global tuberculosis control 2008 specifies a slow progress in the overall development in TB diagnosis and control.
The report that collects data from over 200 countries and territories each year found that there has been a significant deceleration in diagnosing people with TB as the rate of TB cases detection was reduced to 3% in 2005-2006 compared to the 6% per year during the period 2001-2005.
The report further states that there were 9.2 million new TB cases detected in 2006 of which 1.5 million people died from TB. The overall number too includes 7 lakh people with HIV and 5 lakh cases of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB). Another 2 lakh people died with HIV associated TB.
Describing sluggishness in various national programmes as one of the reason for this slowing progress, Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General said that it is an utmost need to strengthen public programmes and working in a better partnership with other service providers, which will further increase diagnosis and treatment for people in need.
The 12th annual WHO report on global TB control categorised two potential barriers for TB control as multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) with less progress in treatment facility of the epidemic and the second cases is with TB/HIV co-epidemic as another biggest challenge to deal with.
The report tells that almost 700,000 TB patients were tested for HIV in 2006 compared to 20,000 of the year 2002; though there is progress but that is far less than the Global Plan to Stop TB 2006-2015 with a target of 1.6 million cases. So there is a clear deficiency in prevention, diagnostic, treatment and care services for TB patients.
As the report points out India and China have the most number of cases followed by African regions. However, progress in case detection has been reportedly slow. Though the overall TB infection has been declining ever since but the progress is not as ideal as it is expected with the kind of effort put in.
Hence there is an urgent need to re-evaluate the entire surveillance, planning and funding to make the global vision of tuberculosis control successful by increaseing TB case detections and cure rates. Furthermore, special attention should be given to co-epidemics with collaborative TV/HIV activities considering the growing number of cases of TB in HIV patients.
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