From foodconsumer.org
WHO reports highest rates of multidrug resistant TB ever recorded
By Sue Mueller
Feb 26, 2008 - 2:00:39 PM
TUESDAY FEB 26, 2008 (Foodconsumer.org) -- The World Health Organization
released a report today saying that multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB)
has been recorded at the highest rates ever worldwide.
According to the report, nearly half a million new cases of
tuberculosis each year would be MDR-TB, about 5% of nine million new TB cases
of all types.
The finding is based on data from the largest survey to date
on the scale of drug resistance in tuberculosis collected between 2002 and 2006
on 90,000 TB patients in 81 countries.
Extensively drug resistant tuberculosis or XDR-TB, a
virtually untreatable disease, also has been reported in 45 countries.
HIV is a risk factor that increased the probability for the patient
to acquire MDR-TB, the report says.
The
report based on surveys in
Latvia
and
Ukraine
shows that those who carried HIV were twice as likely to have MDR-TB as those
who did not have the virus.
The highest rate of MDR-TB among all cases of tuberculosis
was found in
Baku, the capital of
Azerbaijan
where early a quarter of all new cases of TB or 22.3% were recorded as
multidrug resistant.
High rates of MDR-TB among new cases of TB were also found
in
Moldova
Ukraine (16%), Tomsk
Oblast in the
Russian Federation
Tashkent
in Uzkekistan (14.8%). These rates exceeded those published in the Who’s 2004
report. (19.4%), Doneysk
in
(15%) and
For
more information, Anti-tuberculosis drug resistance in the world
The
report [pdf 2.48Mb]