The lives of up to half a million people living with Aids in Africa can be saved each year if they are also treated for tuberculosis (TB), two United Nations agencies said on Tuesday.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAids said that about eight million of about 25-million Africans who live with HIV — the virus that causes Aids — also carry the germs that cause TB.
Without treatment for TB, these patients “typically die within months”, they said in a statement released from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where a meeting of international health experts is taking place this week to discuss the issue.
“We cannot talk seriously about fighting Aids while ignoring TB,” said Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a partnership between governments and aid agencies.
“In Africa, TB and HIV collaborate to kill,” he said in a statement, adding that the fund will strive to ensure that its schemes to tackle Aids also include a strategy to fight TB, and vice-versa.
Between 5% and 10% of people infected with HIV develop TB each year and up to half will catch it at some point in their lives, according to WHO and UNAids estimates.
“If we jointly tackle TB and HIV, we can be much more effective in controlling both diseases,” said Peter Piot, executive director of UNAids.
In some regions of Africa, 75% of TB patients are HIV-positive, yet in countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Zimbabwe fewer than 40% of people living with the sickness are receiving proper treatment, according to the WHO and UNAids.
“As we scale up efforts to increase access to anti-retrovirals in Africa, we must simultaneously help people living with HIV survive their bouts with TB,” said Jack Chow, WHO assistant director general.
“This is one of the most effective ways we can help save lives in Africa,” he added.
Nelson Mandela drew attention to the issue at a world Aids conference in Bangkok in July, where he branded TB — of which he himself was once a victim — a pandemic. — Sapa-AFP