MDR-TB Treatment & Prevention

2010 World TB Day Recap

Started by Julia Fischer-Mackey on 24 Mar 2010
Last edited by Sophie Beauvais on 30 Mar 2010

Dear Members,

In honor of World TB Day, we wanted to share some highlights from today’s news. If your organization or government rolled out new strategies, reports, or targets for World TB Day, please share your news with the community! Thank you.

1. In preparation for World TB Day, the WHO released its report: Multidrug and extensively drug-resistant TB (M/XDR-TB): 2010 Global Report on Surveillance and Response.

The report, which is an update of the 2006 Anti-Tuberculosis Drug Resistance in the World Report No. 4: http://www.ghdonline.org/drtb/resource/anti-tuberculosis-drug-resistance-in-t..., states that

“New findings presented in this report give reason to be cautiously optimistic that drug-resistant TB can be controlled,” but it reinforces that “urgent investments in infrastructure, diagnostics, and provision of care are essential if the target established for 2015 – the diagnosis and treatment of 80% of the estimated M/XDR-TB cases – is to be reached.”

One interesting discovery was that in two Russian oblasts, the proportions of MDR-TB among new TB cases peaked in 2004 and 2006 and are now in decline, which the report attributes to successful TB control efforts. This is important because it seems to indicate that the burden of MDR-TB can be successfully curbed even in settings with limited resources.

Another finding was that contemporary diagnostics for MDR-TB are available in fewer than half of the countries with high MDR-TB burdens. The report states that building of laboratory capacity to diagnose MDR-TB is one of the key challenges facing countries in scaling-up their MDR-TB efforts. The issue of laboratory capacity is addressed in an excellent presentation on Drug Susceptibility Testing by John Ridderhof, DrPH, which was recently posted here: http://www.ghdonline.org/drtb/resource/tb-drug-susceptibility-testing-expert-.... And a great new resource of note: the Global Laboratory Initiative Tuberculosis Network with Google has put up an interactive map with contact references, exact locations, and testing capabilities for SRL and NRL here: http://sites.google.com/site/glitblabnetwork/home

With regard to XDR-TB, it was found that 5.4% of MDR-TB cases were found to have XDR-TB and that eight countries reported XDR-TB in more than 10% of MDR-TB cases.

For more interesting findings, read the full report here: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2010/9789241599191_eng.pdf

2. Medecins Sans Frontieres marked World TB Day by drawing attention to Lesotho’s newly-revised life expectancy of between 36 and 40 years, which it attributes to the deadly combination of HIV and TB. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/03/24/world/AP-AF-Lesotho-Tuberculosis.h...

3. The US government released its 5-year plan for addressing the global TB epidemic, the Lantos-Hyde United States Government Tuberculosis Strategy. Its goals for 2009-2014 are summarized as follows:
- Contributing to a 50% reduction in TB deaths and disease burden from the 1990 baseline;
- Sustaining or exceeding the detection of at least 70% of sputum smear-positive cases of TB and successfully treating at least 85% of cases detected in countries with established USG tuberculosis programs;
- Successfully treating 2.6 million new sputum smear-positive TB patients under DOTS programs by 2014, primarily through support for needed services, commodities, health workers, and training, and additional treatment through coordinated multilateral efforts; and
- Diagnosing and initiating treatment of at least 57,200 new MDR-TB cases by 2014 and providing additional treatment through coordinated multilateral efforts.
To read the full report, see http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_health/id/tuberculosis/publications/usg-...

4. Family Health International recently became a member of the TB Trials Consortium, an international consortium that conducts programmatically relevant research on new TB drugs and treatment strategies in order to find shorter, more effective, and safer treatment regimens for the cure of TB patients worldwide. Conducting TB clinical trials as part of the consortium represents a new and exciting area of work for FHI. To read more about this work, see http://www.fhi.org/en/CountryProfiles/Cambodia/res_FHI_TB_Clinical_Trials.htm

Also note that donors for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are meeting in The Hague this week to discuss funding for 2011-2013. The meeting will lay the foundation for the pledging conference that will take place at UN Headquarters in New York, 4-5 October 2010. For more information, see
http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/replenishment/hague

Keywords: Advocacy