GagliardiNews

Drug-resistant tuberculosis is spreading faster than medical experts feared, reaching the highest rates ever recorded, the World Health Organization said in a report Tuesday, reported the Star Tribune.
The rate of TB patients infected with the drug-resistant strain is exceeded 20 percent in some countries, the U.N. agency said.
The highest rate was in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, where 22.3 percent of new tuberculosis cases were drug-resistant, followed by about 20 percent in Moldova and 16 percent in Donetsk, Ukraine, W.H.O. said.
"Ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable to see rates like this," said Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of WHO's "Stop TB" department. "This demonstrates what happens when you keep making mistakes in TB treatment."
These levels surpassed the highest levels that nearly all experts thought were possible, Dr. Raviglione said in an interview, reported the New York Times.
Many countries have failed to invest enough to run laboratories needed to detect the disease, said health officials. The countries also failed to assure patients sufficient amounts of standard drugs and to monitor patients to ensure that they complete a full course of therapy. Inadequate therapy often leads to development of multiple-drug-resistant strains of the tuberculosis bacterium.
Globally, about one in 20 new cases of tuberculosis is resistant to first line drugs, which translates into nearly 500,000 of the 9 million new tuberculosis cases that are detected each year, according to the W.H.O. survey, which involved 90,000 patients in 81 countries.
High rates of drug-resistant TB were also found in China and India, the world's two most populous nations that together are home to half the world's cases, reported the Star Tribune.
Drug-resistant TB arises when primary TB treatment is poor. Countries with strong treatment programs, like the U.S. and other Western nations, should theoretically have very little drug-resistant TB. However, the Chinese government says 94 percent of TB patients complete their first TB treatment.
A decade ago, when W.H.O. first received reports of 9 to 10 percent rates of multiple-drug-resistant TB in some areas, many scientists thought the figure was inaccurate due to a misclassification that mixed new, previously treated and chronic cases together, reported the New York Times. Experts also said higher rates were not possible, Dr. Raviglione said, but “we see now it is possible, it tells you they are really doing something wrong in places where this form of TB is spreading.�
Drug-resistant tuberculosis, can be transmitted from an infected individual to a noninfected person in droplets through coughing, sneezing, singing and other activities. The drug-resistant form can take two years to treat with drugs that are 100 times more expensive than the first-line regimen, the health agency, a unit of the United Nations, said.
"Multi-drug resistant TB is a threat to every person on the planet," said Mark Harrington, executive director of Treatment Action Group, a public health think tank. "It's not like HIV, where you are only infected through specific actions. TB is a threat to every person who takes a train or a plane."