A new briefing paper by Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors without Borders (MSF) published 17th March, outlines why the alarming spread of deadly strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) are one of the biggest global health threats we face today.
Every year, around eight million people worldwide fall ill with TB and 1.3 million people die from the disease. Standard TB is a curable disease, but an inadequate global response has allowed the growing epidemic of drug-resistance to take hold.
Now these deadlier DR-TB strains are spreading from person to person – even to people who’ve never had TB before.
TB is airborne and contagious, and new forms which cannot be treated with standard TB treatment are appearing at an alarming rate.
Half a million new cases are diagnosed every year, and cases of even harder-to-treat multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) have doubled in the UK over the past decade. London is already the TB capital of Western Europe.
Drug-resistant forms of TB are much harder to cure: standard TB drugs don’t work on DR-TB and doctors must turn to long, arduous complex and expensive treatments that only cure half the patients at best.
More on the MSF website at: http://www.msf.org.uk/article/drug-resistant-tuberculosis-biggest-threat-global-health-youve-never-heard