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By Patricia Reaney
LONDON, Mar 20 (Reuters) - The UN's World Health Organization launched a new drug facility Tuesday to improve access to life-saving tuberculosis treatments in developing countries over the next 5 years.
Although a TB cure has been available for more than 50 years, more people are dying from it than ever before and it is now the world's most lethal curable infectious disease.
Every year an estimated 8.5 million new cases occur and nearly 2 million people die from the illness, caused by an airborne bacterium.
The Global TB Drug Facility, which will be financed by donations, will act as a procurement agency to provide the most effective drugs to qualifying countries and organizations that enter into agreement with it. The hope is that it will increase and improve the treatment of TB worldwide.
Twenty-three countries, mainly in Africa and Asia, have 80% of the world's TB cases.
"It will be a mechanism for ensuring increasing access to high-quality drugs," WHO's Dr. Ian Smith said in a telephone interview from Geneva.
200,000 TO BENEFIT FROM FACILITY
Up to 200,000 TB patients in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe will be treated in the first year through the facility, which will be managed by Stop TB, a global partnership of agencies working together to fight the disease.
"What has become clear in recent years is that drug shortages are one of the very significant reasons why people don't get effective treatment. Only about one in four patients worldwide is treated in the DOTS program," he added.
DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course) is a program to control TB that involves government cooperation, drug therapy and patient surveillance to make sure sufferers can complete a course of treatment.
Not finishing a course of drugs is one of the main causes behind the increase of multi-drug resistant TB, which threatens to make TB untreatable in the future, Smith said.
The facility aims to increase the number of patients being treated under the DOTS program by nearly 50%.
Until now, drugs for the DOTS program have been bought by participating governments or funded through the World Bank, grants or loans to developing countries.
"It has all been a bit piecemeal. What the drug facility can also provide is an opportunity for donors and countries to do their procurement through a mechanism that will insure both the quality and affordability of drugs," Smith added.
MORE DYING FROM TB THAN EVER BEFORE
Tuberculosis seemed to have disappeared in many industrialized countries since the 1980s, but Smith said it remained in the developing world.
"Although it was off the radar screens for a while it has never gone away completely and it is now an even bigger problem than it was in the past. There are more people dying from TB than ever before," he added.
Population growth, worldwide travel and multi-drug resistant TB have contributed to the increase. But most of the growth is due to the impact of HIV. Tuberculosis is one of the main opportunistic infections that kills AIDS sufferers, and people with HIV are more susceptible to TB.
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