Throughout time, mankind's ingenuity has been breathtaking.
We've discovered fire, invented the wheel, created the World Wide Web, yet for centuries
one tiny microorganism has defied us.
I feel that tuberculosis at present is like a time bomb and it will blast anytime.
Tuberculosis is one of the world's foremost infectious killers, infecting 9 million new
people every year, and now the bacterium is mutating into far deadlier forms.
You should be not just worried but very worried about drug resistant TB. There's an estimated
600, over 600,000 cases in the world and these cases are everywhere. They're in Europe, they're
in Africa, they're in Asia, they're in everybody's doorstep. It's everybody's problem now.
Drug resistant TB does not respond to the first line antibiotics used to treat standard
TB. It's airborne, infectious and spreading indiscriminately.
We're now facing a major emergency with drug resistant TB, with increasing numbers around
the world. In all of our projects, when we look, we are finding patients in really large
numbers.
An infected person can spread TB to another 15 more people in a year. So if we don't treat
this multi-drug resistant TB, then there will be lots of open cases and it will keep
on mounting up again more and more.
Despite the growing global health threat, the response is shockingly inadequate. Today,
barely one in 20 TB patients is properly tested for drug resistance. And new tools in rapid
diagnosis have yet to reach many places.
After receiving reports that my daughter died on MTR, I nearly had a stroke. She was tested
in time, but I was told that the results will come after six weeks. Six weeks came, two months
came, three months came, four months came that time. She was dead already. If maybe there
was a way of getting the treatment sooner, she wouldn't die.
For Brigitte's daughter, the long diagnosis period cost her life. But not before the resistance
strain of TB had spread to her young son. Thankfully, a new rapid diagnostic test enabled
Seveule to get the right treatment fast. Now he faces the next big challenge.
As a medical doctor, I find it extremely conflicting to put a patient on MDR TB treatment. First
of all, the drugs are toxic. They are minimally effective and they can cause long drawn-out
suffering and lasting side effects.
For two years taking thousands of pills and receiving hundreds of injections, patients
have a paltry 50% chance of cure. And with no formulations for children available, the
situation is critical.
When in a very terrible situation at the moment, only about one in five patients are estimated
to get treatment. This is woefully inadequate.
Not to that the extortionate cost of the drugs and grossly inadequate international funding
and it's clear we face an impending disaster.
The global fund is the most important international donor for TB, providing around 90% of the
funding. The last round actually TB was deprioritised and received a smaller share of funding.
And this undermines what we're trying to do at the field and it sends a very bad negative
message about how important TB is as a priority.
The price of not acting is really too frightening to comprehend. We need more research and development.
We need more innovation and we need better tools.
