The Deadliest Form Of Tuberculosis Is Snowballing In Countries That Are Already Hard Hit

The deadliest forms of tuberculosis are worsening in four of the countries with the largest number of TB cases, according to a new report in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal. While tuberculosis, when treated, has an over 83 percent cure rate on average globally, multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), which is resistant to the standard TB antibiotic regimen, has about a 52 percent survival rate if treated. Extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) has a 28 percent survival rate when treated. Currently, almost 40 percent of all multidrug-resistant tuberculosis cases ― about 230,000 ― occur in Russia, India, the Philippines and South Africa, according to Lancet. And this study predicts that by 2040, a third of all tuberculosis cases in Russia, 1 in 10 in India and the Philippines, and 1 in 20 in South Africa are expected to be multidrug-resistant. In 2000, only 24.8 percent of cases in Russia, 7.9 percent in India, 6 percent in the Philippines and 2.5 percent in South Africa were multidrug-resistant. type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Coverage + articlesList=58d435c2e4b03787d3568587 Increasingly, the report argues, drug-resistant tuberculosis will be caused by person-to-person infection, rather than acquired resistance.  “Many people believe that if you do a good job finding or treating people with drug-susceptible TB, that is, if you don’t create it in the first place, then it’ll go away by itself,” said Dr. Peter ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news