ABC News, UNICEF calls for global action against TB epidemic

[TIN KYI <tinkyi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ABC News, 24 March 2000
UNICEF calls for global action against TB epidemic

BANGKOK, March 24 (Reuters) - A tuberculosis epidemic is  raging across Asia
and, together with HIV/AIDS, poses a serious  threat to the region's social
and economic development, the  United Nations Children's Fund said on
Friday.
UNICEF said in a statement eight million new cases of TB  appeared every
year and two million people died of the disease,  which attacks the lungs.
Asia accounts for 70 percent of all TB cases and 10 Asian  countries --
Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia,  Myanmar, Pakistan, the
Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam -- are  among 22 countries with the
highest number of cases.
The director of UNICEF's East Asia and Pacific Regional  Office, Kul Gautam,
said TB was the single biggest global killer  of young women, taking the
lives of 750,000 women a year.
"The deep stigma of TB often results in women being  ostracized by their
families and communities, which in turn has  a devastating impact on the
well being of their children,  families and society in general," he said in
the statement.
"The result is that many thousands of aspiring families are  driven back
into poverty, while those families that were already  impoverished must
struggle even harder just to survive."
Children were especially vulnerable to the effects of TB,  which was often
difficult to diagnose in young children and  therefore difficult to treat
effectively.
Children suffered serious social consequences when someone  in their family
had TB. In India, for example, over 300,000  children were withdrawn from
school each year either to go to  work to help their families bear the costs
of TB care or due to  the stigmatising effects of the disease.
"TB CAN BE PREVENTED AND CURED"
"But TB can be prevented and cured," Gautam said.  "Several countries in
Asia, including such low-income countries  as Cambodia and Vietnam, have
developed model responses and are  well on their way to effectively
controlling the disease.
"The medical solutions are well within our reach and  include a six-month
directly observed treatment short-course of  drugs.
"The remaining challenge is to mobilise sufficient  political will to attack
TB and to build a social partnership  that includes governments, the
business and private sector,  concerned institutions, NGOs, and communities
and families."
UNICEF backed a call made in Amsterdam on Friday, World TB  Day, by
ministers of health, finance and social welfare from  around the world for
global action to combat the disease.
UNICEF, working with other global health agencies, supports  a "Stop TB"
initiative in the Asia-Pacific. The initiative  aims to reduce TB in the
region by 50 percent in 10 years.
Although some two billion people were infected with TB, only  a relatively
small percentage ever develop the disease, it said.
But TB was opportunistic, and people whose immune systems  had been weakened
by HIV/AIDS faced a 30 times greater risk of  developing the disease.
Approximately 40 percent of people with  HIV/AIDS also developed TB, and in
many countries TB was also  the leading cause of death for HIV/AIDS-infected
people.
Gautam said urgent action was imperative to prevent the  spread of TB and
contain treatment costs because the number of  multi-drug resistant forms of
TB was on the rise.
Treating a normal case of TB with a six-month course of  drugs costs as
little as $11, but treating a multi-drug  resistant case increased costs at
least 100-fold.