The Big Moves This Past Year In The Fight Against the World's Top Infectious Killer

Each year, World Tuberculosis Day brings another reminder that an airborne scourge is the top infectious killer worldwide despite being preventable and curable. An estimated 1.8 million people died in 2015 of the disease, which has a 90 percent cure rate if treated. The growth of drug-resistant strains has experts worried that decades of progress in the fight could be erased. And the World Health Organization estimates there is a $2 billion investment gap in the efforts of low- and middle-income countries to fight tuberculosis each year, as well as a $1.3 billion shortfall in research and development. But despite those grim statistics, the TB global health community says there are a few things to be thankful for. As Eric Goosby, the U.N. special envoy on tuberculosis, put it: “We are at a moment where a lot is converging around people’s understanding of the role TB plays, the tragedy of a disease that is allowed to kill almost 2 million people a year that we can cure, and the ability to put a wall down in front of propagating the development of more cases of extensively drug-resistant and multidrug-resistant TB.” From the release of new treatment regimens to combat drug-resistant strains to the rise in global political attention on the disease, here are some of the things experts in the field pointed to as wins for the year. THE RELEASE OF A NINE-MONTH REGIMEN FOR MDR-TB The release of a shorter regimen to combat MDR-TB was hailed as a massive li...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news