- New forms of tuberculosis resistant to drugs used to
treat the disease are proliferating around the world, especially in eastern
Europe, experts warned yesterday.
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- Leading infectious disease experts at the World Health
Organisation estimate that there are now 300,000 cases of multi drug-resistant
TB worldwide. Almost 80% of these are resistant to at least three of the
four main drugs used to treat the potentially lethal bacterial disease,
according to a WHO report published yesterday.
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- While the biggest TB burden is in countries where public
health systems are struggling, such as in the developing world and the
former Soviet Union, in the days of frequent and easy international air
travel, nobody is immune.
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- Paul Nunn, of the WHO's Stop TB department, said that
aircraft passengers spread TB in a way that cannot be controlled. Unlike
malaria when the interiors of planes leaving malarial zones are sprayed
to kill mosquitos, tuberculosis is spread by passengers who may not know
that they have it.
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- "The [Boeing] 747 is the vector of this disease
and it is not susceptible to vector control," said Dr Nunn
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- Of particular concern is the strain called MDR TB. "We
worry about MDR TB because untreated it is a death sentence," said
Dr Nunn. "Treatment demands a cocktail of drugs which is expensive
and difficult to administer."
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- The former Soviet Union is now "the MDR capital
of the world," said Dr Nunn, with a rate almost 10 times that of anywhere
else. But there are nearly 9m cases of TB around the world every year and
2m deaths.
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- There are around 40 to 50 cases of MDR TB in Britain
every year - about 1% to 1.5% of TB cases - and the numbers appear to be
fairly stable.
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- Paul Sommerfeld, founder of the charity TB Alert in the
UK, said: "This is an airborne infectious disease. It is not possible
to isolate any part of the world from the rest of the world."
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- There is TB screening at ports of entry, "but border
controls have a very, very small role to play in this," he said. Better
detection and treatment in the worst affected countries was needed.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1170216,00.html
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