Efforts to combat TB must be “scaled up” (file photo). January 2,2011 : Kirsty Buchanan
THE country’s leading health protection body has called for a national strategy to combat tuberculosis as cases in the UK reach record levels.
The Health Protection Agency has warned that with cases at more than 9,000 a year, the highest level in 30 years, efforts to combat the killer disease must be “scaled up”.
For the first time the HPA has called for a national programme to target those most at risk and new measures to ensure they complete their treatment. It wants targeted intervention to help quick diagnosis among high-risk groups, including the homeless, drug users, prisoners and people born in countries such as India, Pakistan and Somalia.
Because of the difficulties in complying with a six-month regime of antibiotic treatment, strains of TB have now become resistant to commonly used drugs. In London drug-resistant TB has been on the increase for 10 years. In 2009, 172 cases were resistant to isoniazid, the standard antibiotic treatment.
A further 58 cases were resistant to more than one drug and the HPA warns of a new super strain of TB which has already claimed lives in the UK. It is known as “extensively drug resistant tuberculosis” or XDR TB.
The HPA report warns: “The emergence of XDR TB is a serious threat to tuberculosis control.” The HPA is also calling for new research to work out why TB is on the decline among those born outside the UK but has not dropped in a decade among those born in Britain.
Tuberculosis was known as the “white plague” in Victorian Britain because of the pallor of its sufferers. New drug treatments all but eradicated it from our shores but since 1987 cases have soared by 57 per cent.
The UK is now the only country in western Europe where the overall TB rate is still rising.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/220612/Health-alert-over-record-TB-tollHealth-alert-over-record-TB-toll#ixzz1AYoPB5d8
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