Africa’s large AIDS population is at special risk from the particularly virulent strain, known as XDR-TB (extremely drug resistant), which had been documented in 35 countries worldwide, 16 of them in this year. “This is the most urgent thing I have seen in my 15 years of working on tuberculosis,” said Mario Raviglione, director of the STOP TB program at the World Health Organization. He introduced WHO’s TB report, which coincides with the 125th anniversary of the discovery of the microbe that causes TB.
…
Some 2 billion people worldwide live with TB, an airborne illness that is normally treatable through inexpensive medication. But if the disease is not diagnosed and treated, it can mutate into drug-resistant strains. In 2005, nearly 9 million people became infected with tuberculosis and 1.6 million died of it, about the same as the year before, which showed that containment efforts were working, Raviglione said. The epidemic is centered primarily in Asia and in Africa, which accounted for 84 percent of the total.

“The good news is that the global incidence may have peaked,” particularly in China, India, and Indonesia, he said. “The bad news is that although the incidence has declined [there] is resistance to most powerful first-line drugs and a form of TB that is resistant to second-line drugs.”