Title: Battling HIV's deadly co-epidemic: improving and expanding care and treatment for tuberculosis.

POPLINE Document Number: 289752

Author(s):

Dadian M

Source citation:

Arlington, Virginia, Family Health International [FHI], Institute for HIV / AIDS, 2005. 6 p. (Snapshots from the Field|USAID Cooperative Agreement No. HRN-A-00-97-00017-00|USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse DocID / Order No. PN-ADD-062)

Abstract:

Few public speakers get the undivided attention that former South African President Nelson Mandela does – and what he says can have a huge impact internationally. At the 2004 International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, he urged conferees to focus renewed energy on a threat powerful enough to undermine global AIDS treatment efforts. “Tuberculosis is too often a death sentence for people with AIDS,” said Mandela, who himself had TB when he was a political prisoner in the 1980s. “Today we are calling on the world to recognize that we can’t fight AIDS unless we do much more to fight TB as well.” Breaking the deadly synergy between TB and HIV is one of the great challenges facing public health programs worldwide. The two diseases are very different: TB is spread primarily by airborne bacteria coughed up by a person with active infection, while HIV is a retrovirus transmitted in blood or other body fluids, most often through sexual contact. Yet each disease – both prevalent in many of the same regions throughout the developing world – accelerates progression of the other, leading to crippling illness and early death. Most people infected by the TB bacteria – as much as a third of the world’s population – have dormant tuberculosis: an inactive, symptom-free, nontransmissible form of the disease that is kept in check by a healthy immune system. But TB carriers who become infected with HIV, which destroys immunity, are 30 to 50 times more likely to develop active tuberculosis. As a result, millions of people throughout the world who might have remained in the dormant stage of TB for life have progressed rapidly to the active disease, which can kill within months if left untreated. (excerpt)

Keywords:

Developing Countries
Progress Report
Recommendations
Evaluation
HIV Positive Persons
Administrative Personnel
Health Personnel
Complications
Tuberculosis
Preventive Medicine
Treatment
User Compliance
Persons Living With HIV/AIDS
HIV Infections
Viral Diseases
Diseases
Organization and Administration
Delivery of Health Care
Health
Infections
Medicine
Health Services
Behavior