Mandela urges war against TB in fighting AIDS :: Namibia Internet Gateway cc ::

Articles: Mandela urges war against TB in fighting AIDS

Posted by admin on Thursday, July 15, 2004 - 02:07 AM

In the combat of HIV/AIDS, the world should improve the fight against tuberculosis(TB), leading killer of HIV-positive people, South Africa's former president Nelson Mandela appealed here on Thursday morning.
"We can not win the battle against AIDS, if we do not also fight TB," said the popular statesman, who unexpectedly appeared at a briefing of the XV International AIDS Conference being held here from Sunday to Friday. By the end of 2003, an estimated population of 38 million were living with HIV/AIDS, among which 14 million were co-infected withTB, according to the statistics of the United Nations. "TB is too often a death sentence for people with AIDS," said Mandela. HIV-positive people are more vulnerable to TB, which has claimed one third of all HIV/AIDS death worldwide. Meanwhile, of the estimated 1.6 million deaths caused by TB each year, one quarter occur among people living with HIV/AIDS. The sub-Saharan Africa, the worst hit region of HIV/AIDS, is home to some 70 percent of the world total infected with both HIV/AIDS and TB. Sharing his personal experience of recovering from TB, Mandela affirmed mankind's capability to cure TB and asked for more urgentdiagnose and treatment for the sufferers. "We have known how to cure TB for more than 50 years," he said."What we have lacked is the will and the resources to quickly diagnose people with TB and get them the treatment they need." "We have also lost ground in the fight against TB in the face of a spreading AIDS epidemic," he added. Scientists and experts also sounded their concerns of the co-infection of TB and HIV/AIDS at the XV International AIDS Conference, the largest gathering of its kind. "The overlap of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS sections represents acatastrophic coalition of two devastating epidemics," said RichardChaisson, a leading scientist in this field from the School of Public Health of the Johns Hopkins University. The world efforts to control of TB have been completely undermined, said him. In countries like Thailand, Uganda and Brazil that have successfully cut down newly HIV/AIDS infection cases, TB infectionrates still stood high, noted Chaisson. "The world has made defeating AIDS a top priority...But TB remains ignored," said Mandela. "Today we are calling on the worldto recognize that we can't fight AIDS unless we do much more to fight TB as well."

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