NAIROBI, Mar 26 (Reuters) - New research is urgently needed to tackle tuberculosis, the deadly lung disease that kills over two million people globally every year, medical aid charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) said on Saturday.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said in a statement that even though a third of the world's population carries TB germs, or bacilli, the last innovative medicine was developed more than 30 years ago, while the last vaccine was made as far back as 1923.

"Despite these devastating statistics and a wealth of knowledge on TB, little research is being done into new medicines for the disease," said the statement released to mark World Tuberculosis Day on Saturday.

TB is a poverty-linked disease that usually affects the lungs and is spread by coughing, sneezing or spitting. Cases have risen alarmingly in Africa.

According to the World Health Organisation, which declared the epidemic a global emergency in 1993, eight million people become ill with TB every year. Three million of these are in southeast Asia and another 1.5 million in Africa. TB is also on the rise in eastern Europe for the first time in 40 years.

Although one person is infected with TB every second, victims do not necessarily become ill. But the chance of becoming sick grows when the immune system is weakened, particularly by HIV.

MSF said the most effective way of treating TB was the Directly Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS), which consists of direct supervision by a health worker of a patient's daily intake of multiple drugs over six to eight months.

This method is prohibitively expensive and beyond the means of many in the developing world, MSF says.

"DOTS is the only tool we currently have, but for the majority of TB patients who are poor to begin with, DOTS isn't cheap and is certainly not a simple treatment," said Pierre Mallet, MSF medical coordinator in Kenya.

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