Prevalent and Transmissible
Nutsa Shubashvili, TV3
Prevalent and Transmissible
“As new threats like Ebola rightly command concern and attention, we need to remind political leaders that TB still accounts for 1.5 million lives every year, which means that every day it kills as many people as Ebola has in total,“ these words belongs to Nick Herbert MP, co-chairman of the UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Tuberculosis. Parliamentarians and political leaders from 5 continents signed the Barcelona Declaration on Tuberculosis (TB) by the end of October 2014. The declaration was the result of the inaugural Global TB Summit, which was held in conjunction with the 45th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Barcelona from 28 October to 1 November. By signing the Declaration politicians committed to work together in the fight against TB. The Declaration also outlines that new TB drugs, diagnostics and vaccines are desperately needed. Politicians have agreed that challenges like co-infection with HIV and a looming co-epidemic of TB and diabetes still remain as an unresolved problem.
45th Union World Conference on Lung Health, Barcelona, Spain, organised by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. Opening Ceremony of the Conference. Photo©Marcus Rose/The Union
The fears of officials are supported with the report – The Looming Co-epidemic of TB-Diabetes: A Call to Action, which was released on the opening day of the 45th Union World Conference on Lung Health. The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) and the World Diabetes Foundation call in their report for international action against a looming co-epidemic of diabetes and tuberculosis. Unfortunately, there are not some promising figures. Diabetes triples the risk that a person will develop tuberculosis. It means that if a person is TB infected and develops diabetes, he\she has a 30 percent lifetime risk of TB. Moreover, it is expected that cases with diabetes will increase from 382 million in 2013 to 592 in 2035. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) TB infected 9 million people worldwide in 2013, 1.5 million people died in 2013 – more deaths from TB last year than any year in history.