PHA-Exch> China launches high-tech TB fight

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel at gmail.com>
crossposted from: "[health-vn discussion group]" health-vn at anu.edu.au

China launches high-tech TB fight
Yidong Gong

The number of Chinese TB patients is 1.3 million, second only to India
WHO/STB/Colors Magazine/J. Mollison
[BEIJING] A new programme aims to use innovative technologies to improve the
detection and treatment of tuberculosis (TB) in China.

Cutting edge diagnostic tests, drug regimens that reduce the number of pills
a
patient needs to take, and innovative ways of ensuring patients take their
drugs
— such as mobile phone text messaging — will all be rolled out under a
programme
led by the Chinese Ministry of Health.

The five-year initiative was announced this week (1 April) on the sidelines
of a
high-level ministerial meeting — involving more than 27 countries — on
multidrug
and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis in Beijing.

It will be implemented in five designated provinces and one municipality —
covering 20 million people at risk of TB.

The proposed diagnostic tools will include the use of LED microscopes and
DNA-based diagnosis, Huan Shitong, a senior programme officer at the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation, told SciDev.Net.

Using LEDs rather than standard phosphorescent lights in microscopes forms a
clearer image and improves TB detection rates in patients' sputum from 50 to
65
per cent. And DNA testing, which can determine which strains of
Mycobacterium
tuberculosis are present in sputum has 98 per cent accuracy and can be used
to
detect drug-resistant strains in as little as a day.

DNA-based diagnosis is cost-effective, says Rajendra S. Shukla, joint
secretary
of the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. DNA tests were piloted
in
India at the end of 2008, and cost US$14 for the general public, he says.

As well as diagnosis, new management methods such as mobile phone text
messaging
and medicine kits with built-in reminder alarms will be used to enhance
patients' drug compliance. Drug combinations — where different drugs are
combined in the same pill — will also be used to reduce the number of pills
a
patient has to take from around 13 to three or four a day.

After two-and-a-half years effective interventions will be scaled up. Some
20
cities covering 100 million people should be included by the end of the
fifth
year of the programme, funded by a US$33 million grant from the Bill &
Melinda
Gates Foundation.

Margaret Chan, director general of the WHO, expressed her optimism for the
programme, saying that China has a successful record of reaching TB control
targets, a high level of political commitment and guaranteed input of
domestic
resources.

Statistics from the WHO put the number of Chinese TB patients at 1.3
million,
second only to India.
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