June  2005:

More lives can be saved now…by curing TB in people who are HIV-positive.

Abstract:

Dr. Felix Salaniponi:

TB needs to be on the agenda at the coming G8 meeting. TB is an emergency in Africa and this is wrong when it is a disease which is curable. The quote from Nelson Mandela “To fight AIDS, we must fight TB, is correct as TB is the biggest killer amongst people who are HIV-positive in Africa. TB kills people with HIV, it is a disease of the poor and it kills the workforce and cripples the economy as it is an age-bound disease.

In Malawi there have been demonstrable efforts to cure TB and in the last 10 years the mortality has begun to slow down. However Malawi is in stark contrast to other places in Africa where death caused by TB rise by 4% yearly. Africa seems to be the only continent where the numbers are rising. This is a big scandal as TB is preventable and treatable.

Two messages:

1. Africa needs help in order to fight TB and subsequently radically halt HIV-positive dying from a curable disease. We need financial help and commitment.

2. The G8 must commit to follow the already developed road-map in this struggle.

Dr. Dermot Maher

HIV causes a steady depletion of the t-helper cells and subsequently people become ever more susceptible to infections. TB is very common infection, in fact, one in four of the world’s population carry the TB infection; however most carry this as a latent illness. Perhaps only one in ten will actually develop TB. Those living with HIV are very likely to develop TB, the current number of positive people who develop TB in Africa is one is three.

TB was already a big problem in Africa before HIV started to spread. It is estimated that the HIV virus has helped escalate TB infections somewhere between 100-500%

Health service response to HIV/AIDS is that they need to be able to respond not only to HIV but also to TB. Programmes need to be intertwined and there needs to be a lot of communication between them.

Recommendations:

We need to harness the capacity of civil society. That is where a large part of the political will is to help produce a good response to the TB emergency.

Health services need to be better staffed and taught to work between the parallel programs of treating HIV and TB.

Nurses and doctors are still moving away from Africa. The NHS will not recruit directly, but private agencies still do and staff can that way work their way into the NHS. The biggest move is however from one African country to another. We need to facilitate working conditions, payment and treatment to staff so that they can stay where they have been educated and/or are needed the most.

It is small world and investing in this infectious disease is beneficial for everywhere.

Winstone Zulu

The AIDS epidemic in Africa looks hopeless unless we start to seriously treat TB. It can prolong people’s lives while they are waiting to access ARVs.

Being brave and admitting that you are positive and that you need drugs is important. I have been treated for TB and I receive ARVs it makes all the difference to me and my family. At the airport when I left to fly to Africa I hugged my children and my brother’s children. The big difference is that my children’s father is still alive while my brother is dead. And this is just because I did seek treatment.