Washington, D.C. - Families USA joined health leaders from around the world today in calling for increased spending to combat tuberculosis (TB), one of the world’s leading infectious killers—second only to HIV/AIDS.
Marking the 25th “World TB Day,” Families USA’s appeal for increased U.S. research and development funds comes with a warning: TB is becoming resistant to existing treatments, and those resistant strains are spreading, even to the U.S. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that in 2005, there were 14,093 reported cases of TB in the U.S.
Families USA’s work on tuberculosis is part of its Global Health Initiative. The Global Health Initiative was launched in 2006 to advocate for increased U.S. investment in global health research and development of medical interventions targeting diseases that disproportionately affect populations in low-income countries.
“Each year, about 2 million people die from TB,” Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA, said today. “Yet in 2006, America’s leading research institute, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent only $150 million on TB research—just one-half of 1 percent of its budget.”
“That is a paltry investment to address one of the world’s worst infectious killers,” Pollack said.
It is estimated that one-third of the world’s population is infected with the bacteria that causes TB, and that each year, about 9 million of those infected develop active TB. People with weakened immune systems, including those with HIV co-infection, are at increased risk of developing active TB.
The current vaccine to prevent TB was introduced in 1923, but over the years, its effectiveness has been greatly diminished, especially in adults. “What is most appalling is the fact that we are trying to fight one of the world’s most infectious diseases with a vaccine that predates talking movies,” said Ron Pollack.
Current TB treatments take at least six months to work and require rigorous programs to ensure patients are compliant with treatment regimens. The failure to follow this cumbersome and long treatment has led to the rise of extensively drug resistant TB strains that do not respond to available treatments. Current diagnostics for TB are also inadequate. It takes at least six weeks to test whether a particular strain of TB is drug resistant. For instance, in a recent outbreak of extensively drug resistant TB in South Africa, 52 of 53 patients died within 25 days, on average—much faster than it takes to make a diagnosis.
Drug resistant TB strains are found in every region of the world, including the United States. From 2003 to 2004, the most recent years for which data are available, there was a double-digit increase in the incidence of multi-drug resistant TB in the U.S.
“With the rise in the incidence of drug resistant TB, the disease not only poses a growing worldwide threat, but is also becoming an increasing danger even here in the U.S.,” said Pollack. “If we don’t dramatically increase funding for R&D, many of these drug-resistant strains of TB will become completely untreatable.”
World TB Day, initiated to build public awareness that tuberculosis is an epidemic in much of the world, was first proclaimed in 1982, on the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the bacteria that causes TB.
