EUROPE/ITALY - World TB Day: TB kills 2 million people every year. Tests and treatment outdated, vaccination has less effect, special care for children needed

Rome (Fides Service) - Century old tests, vaccine produced in 1920 and same treatment used for 30 or 50 years. The fight against TB is in danger of defeat because of “old fashioned means of diagnosis and treatment”.
The alarm has been sounded on the eve of the World Day for TB on 24 March, by Doctors Without Frontiers DWF association which assists about 20,000 TB sufferers with 32 projects in 17 different countries.
Every year TB kills at least 2 million people, one out of every three persons is a healthy TB carrier affected by the latent form of the disease. Every year about 8 million people, 95% in developing countries, enter the full-blown stage and two million, 99% in developing countries, die. Moreover in 12 million patients the TB bacillus co-exists with HIV virus. 4% of the patients, and 50% in some parts of Eastern Europe, is resistant to at least one medicine used to treat the pathology and every year 250-400,000 new drug resistant cases are registered.
“To give proper assistance to TB sufferers we need reliable diagnosis tools - said the DWF director - but we do not have them”. The tests used today were produced in 1882, “they are particularly ineffective in the case of HIV positive persons: even the best equipped centres diagnose only 50% of HIV/TB patients”. In children diagnosis is ever more difficult because, “ it is based exclusively on symptoms and cannot be confirmed with precision”. It is absolutely necessary to render available a combination of anti-TB drugs for children.
The TB vaccine was produced in 1921 and it offers limited prevention for adults and many experts consider it of little use.

(AP) (23/4/2004 Agenzia Fides; Righe:27; Parole:355)