Originally published September 29 2005
Asia faces deadly TB-HIV double infection, WHO says
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The World Health Organization stated Thursday that a deadly double infection of tuberculosis and HIV is posing a serious threat in Cambodia, Vietnam, China and the Philippines, and Reuters reports that the growing resistance to drug treatments is fuelling a rise in cases.
Drug resistance combined with a deadly double infection of tuberculosis and HIV is posing a serious threat in Cambodia, Vietnam, China and the Philippines, said the World Health Organization.
The WHO said tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in HIV-AIDS patients in the Asia-Pacific region and growing resistance to a variety of drugs is fuelling a rise in cases.
Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease that mostly attacks the lungs.
It is an opportunistic infection that once contracted by a HIV patient sees each disease speed the progress of the other.
In the Western Pacific, which stretches from China to Fiji, more than 1.5 million people were living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2004 and about 120,000 people are expected to die of AIDS in 2005, said a WHO report on tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS.
People with HIV are up to 50 times more likely to develop tuberculosis (TB).
"HIV and TB are the leading killers among the infectious diseases today and together they form a deadly partnership," said the report released on Friday at a WHO conference in Noumea, capital of New Caledonia in the South Pacific.
"In the region, TB-HIV has not reached epidemic proportions but is already serious in some areas," it said.
Every year eight to 10 million people contract the disease and two million die, it said.
The WHO said a global target of reducing tuberculosis prevalence and deaths by half from 1999 to 2010 was in jeopardy because of a rise in TB-HIV, warning tuberculosis deaths could rise significantly unless the fight against TB-HIV was intensified.
"TB-HIV co-infection threatens to reverse the steady progress toward achieving this goal," said Dr Shigeru Omi, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific.
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