Global alert over deadly new TB strains

[spindrifter]

Sarah Boseley, health editor
Wednesday September 6, 2006
The Guardian

World health officials last night put out an unprecedented warning that deadly new strains of tuberculosis, virtually untreatable using the drugs currently available, appear to be spreading across the globe.

The new strains are known as extreme drug-resistant TB, or XDR-TB. They have been identified and have killed people in several countries, including the United States and eastern Europe, and they have recently been found in Africa, where they could swiftly put an end to all hope of containing the Aids pandemic through treatment.

Yesterday Paul Nunn, who heads the World Health Organisation's TB resistance team, said the situation was very serious. There are 9m cases of TB in the world and the WHO estimates that 2% of them - or 180,000 - could be XDR-TB.

<snip>

Even in the United States, which has the best medicines available, a third of those who have been diagnosed with XDR-TB have died. In March, the Centres for Disease Control in the US registered that there had been 64 cases of XDR-TB; 21 of those ended in death.

<more>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,,1865719,00.html

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This is the first I have seen of this in the media, despite the fact that I work in an environment where we are exposed from time to time to active TB cases...

[Monkeyman]

1. VA hospitals are pushing test tell you something