TB fight could take centuries without new tools: UN

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - Eradicating tuberculosis could take centuries without better drugs and diagnostics for the contagious disease and its deadly new strains, United Nations health officials said on Thursday.

Nearly 9 million people caught tuberculosis in 2005 and 1.6 million died of it, about the same as the year before, which showed that containment efforts were working, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a report.

But reducing the number of new cases will be "extremely slow" unless health workers get access to new tools, said Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO's Stop TB Department.

"If we go on with this type of pace, then it will take centuries to eliminate TB," he told a news conference in Geneva.

One-third of the world's population is infected with the microbes that cause tuberculosis, a largely curable respiratory disease that spreads like a common cold.

Only 10 percent typically get sick and those with weakened immune systems are most vulnerable.

It is the top killer of those with HIV, causing 200,000 deaths a year. Faster and more reliable tests could save lives and prevent its spread among vulnerable groups, said Peter Piot head of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Africa's large HIV population is at special risk from a particularly deadly new strain, known as XDR-TB, which has been discovered in 28 countries worldwide since last year.

"There is an urgent need to invest far more in research for new and more effective ways to diagnose TB," Piot said.

Humanitarian group Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said drug resistance added to the problems and made it very difficult for health workers to control tuberculosis in some areas.

"In places where we see a lot of HIV/AIDS, the risk of (drug-resistant tuberculosis) spreading like wildfire is a terrifying but all too likely prospect," said Liesbet Ohler, a doctor with MSF's programme in a slum near Nairobi.

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), which represents 25 firms and 46 industry groups, said its members were researching 17 tuberculosis drugs, and six were in clinical trials. Two tuberculosis vaccines were also in early-stage trials, it said.

MSF said none of the compounds in the research pipeline showed promise in shortening the tuberculosis treatment course, which can last years, and the diagnostics being developed were not simple enough to detect tuberculosis in difficult settings.