Coordinate the fight against TB and HIV saves the life of 900,000 people

MADRID, 02 (EUROPA PRESS)

The World Health Organization (who) has released this Friday an update of its Guide to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis and HIV. The objective is to “provide continuity to the success” reached with the first in 2004, that improving collaboration between the services of attention to both diseases has saved the lives of approximately 910.000 people in just six years.

New lines of who to diagnose, prevent and treat HIV and tuberculosis together detailing on Monday, March 5, at the Conference on infections of Retroviruses and opportunistic (CROI, in English), in Seattle, Washington.

To give continuity to the success achieved with the first guide on tuberculosis and HIV, launched in 2004, who has today released an update of its overall policy to prevent, diagnose and treat together the TB and HIV, reported from the who, they recalled that TB is “the leading cause of death for people with HIV”.

Since 2004, has increased up to 12 times the number of people with HIV who has been testing to detect tuberculosis, from 200,000 people analyzed in 2005 to 2.3 million people in 2010. Also, evidence of HIV among TB patients have increased about five times, from 470,000 tests 2005 to 2.2 million in 2010.

With the experience accumulated in the last six years, who now launches an update of these guidelines to accelerate the coordination of public health interventions and further reduce deaths by these two diseases.

For the director of the Department to curb Tuberculosis of Mario Raviglione, who “now is the time to make headway in these actions and break the chain linking TB and HIV with death for so many people”.

The main elements of this new policy include undergo HIV testing routinely to patients with tuberculosis, people with symptoms and their families; provide co-trimoxazola, a cost-effective medicine to prevent infections in patients with tuberculosis and HIV, or that all patients with tuberculosis and HIV start antiretroviral therapy as soon as possible.

More than 100 countries are now undergoing more than half of their patients with TB to HIV testing. Progress has been particularly marked in Africa, where the number of countries which analysed more than half of their TB patients for HIV increased from five in 2005 to 31 in 2010.

However, who warns that “there is still much to be done” because although patients co-infected with TB and HIV in antiretroviral therapy has increased gradually – 36 to 46 percent in five years – is necessary to increase this percentage.