WHO says 36 million cured of TB in last 15 years

An aggressive treatment method has cured some 36 million people from tuberculosis over the past 15 years and averted up to 8 million deaths, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. 

Since the adoption of a WHO-based six-point strategy to curb the spread of TB, cure rates have risen regularly.

In the past 12 months alone, 2.3 million people were cured -- the highest annual number ever for infectious patients.  

Some 87 percent of patients globally who are treated for TB are cured, exceeding for the first time a global target of an 85-percent cure rate since it was set in 1991, the WHO said.

The strategy involves increased and sustained government financing, high-quality diagnosis, standardized and supervised treatment, an effective drug supply and management system and a system to monitor and evaluate progress.

"Fifteen years of TB investments are bringing visible results in terms of human lives saved. Together, national programs, the WHO, UNAIDS, the Global Fund and other partners have helped save millions of lives from TB," Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO''s Stop TB department, said in a statement. "But the current pace of progress is far from sufficient to decisively target our goal of TB elimination."

TB, which usually harms the lungs but can also affect the brain, kidneys, or spine, is one of the oldest known diseases. It spreads mostly among the poor in developing regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, India and China.

TB deaths fell sharply in rich and scientifically advanced countries with improvements in public health and the development of antibiotics, and the disease faded as a major public health threat.

It resurfaced in the industrial world in the 1980s when HIV-infected people started falling ill and dying from TB because the virus had savaged their immune systems. 

Only HIVAIDS kills more people than TB. Last year, 1.8 million people died from TB, including half a million HIV-related deaths. 

While one in every three people in the world is infected with TB, only 10 percent will develop the active form of the disease, due mostly to a weakened immune system caused by AIDS and other illnesses.

The WHO has a new anti-TB strategy to sharply reduce the global tuberculosis burden by 2015 by ensuring all patients, including those co-infected with HIV or drug-resistant TB, can get high-quality diagnosis and treatment.

Health experts gathered at a lung conference in Cancun, Mexico, called last week for more funding to develop better diagnostic tests, vaccines and drugs for tuberculosis.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said on Tuesday it had approved $279 million in new grants for India, taking total funds for the world's second-most populous country to more than $1.1 billion.

On Monday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had awarded $90 million to study TB drugs at 20 cites in the United States and around the world over the next 10 years.

TB drugs require at least six months of therapy, but people often do not take their full regimen of drugs, which has helped spawn drug resistance and made TB more dangerous and difficult to treat.