Drug-resistant TB seen at record levels globally

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cases of tuberculosis that defy existing drugs are being recorded globally at the highest rates ever seen, with parts of the former Soviet Union especially vulnerable, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

In a report based on data from 81 countries, the WHO estimated nearly half a million people a year worldwide become infected with a form of TB resistant to two or more of the primary drugs used to treat it. That number accounts for about 5 percent of the 9 million new TB cases annually.

Extensively drug-resistant TB, the form that is hardest to treat, was seen in 45 countries and may be present in others because only extremely limited data was available from Africa, the U.N. health agency said.

"This is my frustration here -- the world is not taking this epidemic seriously," Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO Stop TB Department, said in a telephone interview. "What the report shows is simply that we are in big trouble in many parts of the world."

Parts of the former Soviet Union -- Russia, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Ukraine -- were among the countries hit hardest by drug-resistant TB. Raviglione attributed this to years of socioeconomic deterioration, dismantling of public health systems, poor living conditions and other factors.

Tuberculosis is an infectious bacterial disease typically attacking the lungs. The emergence and spread of drug-resistant germs makes treating it much harder and could make the disease, which has killed people for untold centuries, even more deadly. An estimated 1.6 million people a year die from TB worldwide.

The report tracked multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, called MDR-TB, and XDR-TB. MDR-TB does not respond to the treatment by two or more of the primary drugs used to combat TB. XDR-TB is the most dangerous form of TB. It is resistant to nearly all drugs used to treat TB.

The report said 489,139 MDR-TB cases emerged in 2006. Raviglione estimated that perhaps 40,000 of these are XDR-TB.