Tuberculosis - a disease as deadly as HIV/AIDS

Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that tuberculosis is the leading infectious disease in the world, as dangerous as HIV/AIDS.

According to the Huffington Post, 2014 data shows that tuberculosis killed 1.5 million people that year, while 400,000 HIV/AIDS patients died from complications related to tuberculosis.

Eric Goosby, a special representative of the United Nations, said that although equally dangerous, tuberculosis does not receive the same attention and investment in treatment as HIV/AIDS. In 2013, the international community spent only 5.3 billion USD on the campaign to fight tuberculosis, much lower than the approximately 19.1 billion USD spent on HIV/AIDS treatment.

Sharing the same view, Dr. Mario Raviglione, Director of WHO's Tuberculosis Program, also said that there needs to be a truly commensurate level of treatment funding for this disease because it is as dangerous as HIV/AIDS.

Tuberculosis - a disease as deadly as HIV/AIDS

According to a 2015 WHO report, an additional $1.4 billion is needed to tackle the global tuberculosis epidemic and $1.3 billion in research and development funding for better tuberculosis drugs and vaccines.

While overall TB mortality rates are declining, MDR-TB is on the rise. In 2014, an estimated 480,000 people were infected with MDR-TB. This number could double in the next 15-20 years and 75 million people will die within 35 years, according to a UK government report.

This new report is therefore a wake-up call for global health. "TB is now as dangerous as HIV/AIDS. We can prevent and treat TB. But we need the voice of the community to increase the momentum and political support for it," said Dr. Goosby.

According to Zing.vn