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Health Reporter
An international health organisation has called on pharmaceutical companies and researchers to mobilise resources urgently to save more lives from drug resistant tuberculosis. In a statement released after the launch of this year’s World TB campaign, Medecins Sans Frontierers (MSF) said every year, about eight million people worldwide fall ill with tuberculosis (TB) and 1,3 million people die from the infectious airborne disease.
In Zimbabwe, about 300 cases of drug resistant TB were recorded last year, up from 250 previously.

“There is growing concern over the spread of DR-TB mainly because it often remains undiagnosed and untreated and thus continues to spread,” said MSF head of mission in Zimbabwe Fasil Tezera.

MSF is providing innovative diagnostic tools and technical assistance in the implementation of a national DR-TB strategy.
“The DR-TB crisis is everybody’s problem and demands an immediate international response,” said Dr Sidney Wong, MSF’s medical director.
“Each year we are diagnosing more patients with DR-TB, but the current treatments aren’t good enough to make a dent in the epidemic.

“It doesn’t matter where you live; until new, short and more effective treatment combinations are found, the odds of surviving this disease today are dismal.”

The growing use of a new tool called “gene expert” for rapidly diagnosing Multi drug resistant (MDR-TB) is helping to identify more patients.
But, for these people, standard TB drugs do not work and doctors should turn to long, complex and expensive treatments that only cure half the patients.

Unlike normal TB treatment, people suffering from MDR-TB face a two-year ordeal which involves swallowing more than 10 000 pills and enduring eight months of daily injections.

The treatments make many people horrendously ill, with side effects that range from nausea and body pain to permanent hearing loss and psychosis.

In spite of their utter inadequacy, the drugs alone cost health providers around US$5 000 per person, not including costs for the long periods of care and the management of side effects.

Although two new TB drugs have been released recently — the first in 40 years — doctors and patients are years away from getting the revolution in treatment they need.

To be effective, TB drugs have to be used in combination, but clinical trials combining the new drugs are not yet underway.