PHA-Exchange> WHO Calls for Free Anti-TB Drugs

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WHO Calls for Free Anti-TB Drugs to AIDS Patients

Reuters NewMedia - Tuesday July 15, 2003
Emelia Sithole
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PARIS (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO)
called on
Tuesday for free anti-tuberculosis drugs to be made
widely
available to HIV sufferers, who are especially hard
hit by the
highly infectious disease.

About a third of the 42 million people living with the
AIDS virus
also have TB and the WHO says 90 percent of them will
die within
a few months unless they get treatment.

"It's essentially immoral not to make this cheap and
effective
treatment of TB widely available, particularly to
those infected
with HIV/AIDS," WHO acting director Mario Raviglione
told a news
conference.

In a report released at the International Aids Society
conference
in Paris, the WHO said it was short of $3.8 billion
for a $9.1
billion five-year plan to halt the spread of
tuberculosis by
2005.

"The WHO is calling for free anti-TB drugs and quality
care to be
made widely available for people living with HIV,
along with
renewed efforts to increase access to anti-retrovirals
in
developing countries," it said in a statement.

The report, released a day before a donors' meeting on
the Global
Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, presents harrowing
pictures
of the ravages of the disease which the WHO says can
be treated
by a course of drugs costing $10 per patient, but
every year
infects eight million and causes two million deaths.

Winstone Zulu, a Zambian activist who was the first
person in the
southern African country to declare publicly that he
was
HIV-positive, told the news conference he was lucky to
be alive
today.

He was saved by a friend who bought the
life-prolonging anti-TB
drugs for him from South Africa after he contracted
the disease
in 1997.

His four brothers were not so fortunate. They have all
died of TB
over the years because they had no easy access to the
drugs and
at times could not afford them.

NO EXCUSE

"We have no excuse... The drugs cost less than $10,"
Zulu told
reporters.

Zulu and Raviglione criticized the treatment by some
governments
of the AIDS and TB problems as two separate issues.

"Ten years after an unprecedented declaration of a
global
tuberculosis emergency by WHO, the TB epidemic has
grown even
worse, primarily due to the spread of HIV," Raviglione
said.

"We need to increase our efforts to address the deadly
synergy
between the two diseases, each of which is fueling the
other's
impact," he said.

HIV sufferers are more vulnerable to TB bacteria
because the AIDS
virus attacks the immune system.

The WHO warned in a statement that an even greater
TB/HIV crisis
might be emerging in India, where the AIDS virus is
rapidly
spreading in the country with the highest caseload
worldwide of
TB infections.

India has 4.5 million people infected with TB, with
1.8 million
new cases being reported each year.

HIV is also causing a six percent annual increase in
the number
of TB cases across sub-Saharan Africa, the WHO said.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to an estimated 30 million
people
living with HIV/AIDS and the WHO says 70 percent of
those
infected with HIV have no access to anti-TB drugs.

In South Africa, which has the highest known HIV
caseload in the
world, the disease kills more than a third of all
HIV-infected
people, the WHO report said.

"With over 11 percent of the population HIV-positive
-- more than
five million people -- the disaster is just
beginning," it said.