WHO: Progress in fighting against TB slows
LONDON - The fight against the global tuberculosis epidemic has slowed to a crawl, the World Health Organization said in a report this week. The worldwide rate of TB infection has been declining for several years.
But between 2005 and 2006, the rate of new cases fell by less than 1 percent, far less than the annual decrease of 5 to 7 percent sought by health officials. At the same time, drug-resistant TB is growing faster than ever, the WHO said last month.
Independent health experts criticized the WHO’s TB policy as too passive, and urged a more proactive strategy.
WHO conceded the most recent decline in the overall infection rate „is very modest, and is not as fast as we would like it to be”, said Dr. Marcos Espinal, executive secretary of the organization’s Stop TB Partnership. „Without new tools, we will not be able to break the back of this epidemic”, he said, citing a lack of vaccines, outdated drugs, obsolete diagnostic tests and overwhelmed health systems as contributing to the slowdown against TB.
In 2006, there were an estimated 9.2 million new tuberculosis cases and 1.5 million deaths, the WHO said in its report, which was based on government data from 202 countries and regions. (AP)
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