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 It found that during 2014, 1.1 million people died of TB in 2014.
During the same period, HIV/AIDS killed 1.2 million people globally,
including 400,000 who were infected with both HIV and TB.
Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO TB program, said the
report reflects the dramatic gains in access to HIV/AIDS treatment
in the past decade, which has helped many people survive their
infections. But it also reflects disparities in funding for the two
global killers.
"The good news is that TB intervention has saved some 43 million
lives since 2000," but given that most cases of TB can be
successfully treated, the death rate remained "unacceptably high,"
Raviglione said in a telephone interview.
The report features data from 205 countries and territories on all
aspects of TB, including drug-resistant forms, research and
development and financing.
It found that 6 million new cases of TB were reported to the WHO in
2014, fewer than two-thirds of the 9.6 million people worldwide
estimated to have fallen sick with TB last year.
Among the estimated 480,000 cases of multi-drug resistant TB in 2014
- a superbug form of the disease that resists the two most potent
anti-TB drugs -, only one in four was diagnosed.
Dr. Grania Brigden, interim medical director of Médecins Sans
Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, said the report "should
serve as a wake-up call that enormous work still needs to be done to
reduce the burden of this ancient, yet curable disease."
Funding disparities were a key issue, Raviglione said, noting that
international funding for HIV/AIDS is 10 times higher than for TB,
with $8 million spent on HIV/AIDS interventions, compared with a
total of $800,000 spent on TB.
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Part of that disparity is because HIV/AIDS largely affects
resource-poor countries in Africa, whereas TB is more prevalent in
countries such as India and China, which are better able to finance
their own domestic efforts to address TB infections.
Even so, there remains a $1.4 billion gap in the amount of funding
needed for TB interventions in 2015.
Raviglione said it is time to start funding TB at a level that can
make even more of a difference in curbing global deaths.(Corrects to
million
(This story corrects billion to million in paragraph 9.)
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
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