Please can someone conduct a world census,i want to know how many we are left in the world with all this type of reports everyday.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on
Wednesday that nine million people developed
tuberculosis (TB) in 2013, while 1.5 million died,
including 360,000 people who were HIV
positive.
WHO in a latest report released in Geneva, said
the world was fighting a difficult battle against
the spread of tuberculosis.
It revealed that there was greater number of
cases than previously estimated amidst
shortfall in research funding.
The report, entitled,' Global Tuberculosis Report
2014', stated that the mortality rate from TB
had continued to fall and dropped by 45 per
cent since 1990.
This development, WHO said, had kept the
world on track to meet the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) target of reversing
TB incidence.
The world body added that ``at the same time,
the number of people developing the disease is
declining by an average 1.5 per cent per year.
``An estimated 37 million lives have been saved
through effective diagnosis and treatment of TB
since 2000”, it said.''
In a message marking the report’s launch, Dr
Mario Raviglione, WHO Director of the Global TB
Programme, applauded the data collection
efforts by member states, noting that it was
helping the UN agency to draw a broader and
clearer picture of the global epidemic.
``Following a concerted effort by countries by
WHO and multiple partners, investment in
national surveys and routine surveillance efforts
have substantially increase,” Raviglione said.
“This is providing us with much more and
better data, bringing us closer and closer to
understanding the true burden of tuberculosis,”
he added.
Although higher than expected, the overall
figures fall within “the upper limit of previous
WHO estimates,” the WHO said.
It stated that in spite of this, a “staggering”
number of lives are being lost to the“second
biggest killer disease from a single infectious
agent” and that “insufficient funding is
hampering efforts to combat the global
epidemic.”
An estimated 8 billion dollars is needed each
year for a full response, but there is currently
an annual shortfall of 2 billion dollars.
Against that backdrop, it stated that the
multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) crisis
continues to wreak havoc through “severe
epidemics” affecting developing countries,
particularly in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
WHO said that in 2013 there was an estimated
480,000 new cases of the difficult-to-treat
strain while extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-
TB), an even more antibiotic resistant strain of
the disease, has spread to 100 countries.
“The progress that has been made in
combatting MDR-TB has been hard won and
must be intensified.
Containing and reversing the epidemic requires
immediate and sustained efforts by all
stakeholders,” Dr Karin Weyer, WHO Coordinator
for Laboratories, Diagnostics and Drug
Resistance stated in the report.
Weyer noted that improved diagnostic tools and
access to patients meant greater detection and
treatment of cases.
He added that in countries such as Estonia and
Latvia, with universal access to rapid
diagnostics and treatment, the number of MDR-
TB cases had fallen “significantly.”
“The gap between detecting and actually getting
people started on treatment”, she said is
widening”.
'We urgently need increased commitment and
funding to test and treat every case,” Weyer
said.
The report also spotlights the ongoing
challenge posed by the HIV and TB “co-
epidemic” which affected an estimated 1.1
million people in 2013.
The overall number of TB deaths among HIV-
positive people, it added, had been falling for
almost a decade
The report however noted that antiretroviral
treatment, preventive therapy and other “key
interventions” needed to be scaled up.
Amid the swarm of data and figures, the report
issues a critical warning regarding the state of
funding for the development of new tools to
combat the global TB epidemic.
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