Joint action on HIV and TB saved 900,000 lives: WHO

An estimated 910,000 lives were saved worldwide over six years thanks to better collaboration between health services to protect people with the AIDS virus from tuberculosis, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.

The WHO said there had been a sharp rise in the numbers of HIV positive people tested for tuberculosis (TB) and vice versa from 2005 to 2010.

That allowed doctors to treat people more quickly and prevent the spread of TB to other patients, it added.

Because the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS weakens the immune system, people with it are much more likely to be infected with TB. Around 34 million people around the world have HIV.

TB kills around 1.7 million people a year. Death rates among HIV patients are high, particularly in poorer countries.

The WHO said more than 100 countries are now testing at least half of their TB patients for HIV.

Fast Facts - Worldwide, TB is the leading cause of death among persons with HIV infection. - It is estimated that about 4.2% of Americans, with or without HIV infection, are infected with TB bacteria. - In 2005, of the TB patients reported to be co-infected with HIV, 63% were non-Hispanic blacks.

"Progress was especially noteworthy in Africa where the number of countries testing more than half their TB patients for HIV rose from five in 2005 to 31 in 2010," it added.

The number of HIV positive people screened for TB rose almost 12-fold, from nearly 200,000 in 2005 to more than 2.3 million in 2010, the WHO said, as it released data on the impact of its 2004 guidelines on TB and HIV.

Based on the success shown by the 2004 to 2010 data, the WHO issued an updated global policy to speed up coordination of public health services to try to cut TB/HIV death rates further.

TB bacteria can live in the body without making a person sick. This is called latent TB infection (LTBI). In most people who breathe in TB bacteria and become infected, the body is able to fight the bacteria to stop it from growing. People with latent TB infection do not feel sick and do not have any symptoms. TB bacteria become active if the immune system can’t stop it from growing. When TB bacteria are active (multiplying in the body), this is called active TB disease.

TB is particularly dangerous for people with HIV infection. People who have both HIV infection and LTBI are 20 to 30 times as likely to develop active TB disease as those who do not have HIV infection. Worldwide, TB is the leading cause of death among persons with HIV infection and almost one in four deaths among people with HIV infection is due to TB. In 2007, there were 554 deaths due to TB in the United States (US), continuing a long-standing decline in TB deaths since the early 1950s.

The only sign of TB infection is a positive reaction to the tuberculin skin test or special TB blood test.