GLOBAL FUND: statistics of lives saved

As of June 2010, 5.7 million lives have been saved as a result of programmes supported by the Global Fund, according to estimates recently released by the Fund. The Global Fund calculates that this means that another 4,000 deaths are averted every day.

These saved lives resulted from actions that included 2.8 million people receiving antiretroviral (ARV) therapy (up 22% from June 2009); seven million new smear-positive TB cases being detected and treated (up 30%); and 122 million bed nets being distributed (up 39%).

Programmes supported by the Global Fund have produced the following additional results: 2.3 billion condoms have been distributed; 930,000 HIV-positive pregnant women have received a complete course of ARV prophylaxis to reduce mother-to-child transmission; 120 million HIV counselling and testing sessions have been conducted; and 4.9 million basic care and support services have been provided to AIDS orphans and vulnerable children.

"In less than a decade, the Global Fund has gone from an idea to a highly efficient tool to turn donor resources into lives saved," said Prof. Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the Global Fund. "If donors provide sufficient resources, by 2015 we could virtually eliminate transmission of HIV from mother to child, dramatically reduce deaths from AIDS and prevent missions of new HIV infections, and achieve significant declines in TB prevalence and mortality."

BIOTERRORISM: Threat versus reality of other diseases

Smallpox was eradicated as a naturally occurring disease more than 30 years ago, thanks to a determined vaccination effort from the World Health Organisation. Nevertheless, it remains on the radar of most health agencies and, just a few years ago, the New England Journal of Medicine ran a special edition on the subject.
The fear is not that the disease could spread from a developing country, as happened in 1970 when a man returned to Germany from Pakistan with smallpox. Today, the perceived threat is that the virus could be deliberately introduced as an act of bioterrorism or war. Some scientists alleged that Russia was producing the virus well into the 1990s. But the stock of smallpox remains tiny: only a couple of laboratories store and research it, including the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
The idea that all remaining stocks could be destroyed was suggested a decade ago and then dismissed. If bioterrorist threats were real, the argument went, then research on smallpox was still needed. However, these storage facilities are an obvious terrorist target and can cause accidental damage. The year after the WHO declared the world smallpox-free, a case arose, traced to a laboratory. Polio, too, has been released via a lab worker.
So, intermittently, the prospect of mass vaccination against smallpox rears its head. The last mass immunisation took place in 1968 in the US, when 14.2 million people were vaccinated. As that last round showed, the side effects can be severe: nine people had a fatal reaction.
Smallpox isn’t the only bioterrorist threat. Anthrax spores were released in the US mail system in 2001, causing five deaths and great alarm. Thousands of people who had no risk of exposure took antibiotics to be “safe”. Investigations revealed that the real-life hazard of the spores was extremely remote. Nevertheless, the US went on to research a vaccine for anthrax, and public health departments worldwide retain a remit to ensure “preparedness” for bioterrorism.
But isn’t all this rather a waste of effort? Predicting even the partially predictable, as we have seen with swine flu, is a dangerous game. Right now, the evidence tells us that people get sick and die younger than they need to because of poverty, dirty water, smoking and alcohol abuse as well as treatable illnesses such as TB, HIV, or malaria. We are all facing sharp budget cuts and health spending is not going to be untouched. Let’s deal with the facts, not fear.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/79dfdf26-679e-11df-a932-00144feab49a.html

POVERTY: Transportation cost affects availability of treatments

BONDO, 17 May 2010 (PLUSNEWS) - Maria Obonyo walked 70km from her home to the nearest hospital in western Kenya's Bondo District to seek treatment for an uncomfortable rash but could not afford the US$2 for the ointment the doctor recommended. "I know I need the drug, but I can't buy it now," Obonyo told IRIN/PlusNews. "The money I have is just enough to buy porridge to give me energy to walk [back home]." When she can afford it, Obonyo, who has been living with HIV for five years, uses public transport to come for her monthly check-up and a refill of her life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) prescription; a one-way trip from her home to the hospital costs a little under a dollar. "I will just go back home and wait for them [the rashes] to disappear on their own," she said. The Kenyan government provides free antiretroviral treatment (ART) to more than 300,000 Kenyans and free diagnosis and treatment of TB, which has significantly lightened the financial load of people living with HIV, but for many, the cost of treating opportunistic infections and journeying to and from distant health centres is crippling. About half the Kenyan population gets by on less than $1 a day; in Bondo, with an HIV prevalence of more than 13 percent, an estimated 41 percent live on less than $1 a day.
http://www.itpcglobal.org/images/stories/doc/ITPC_MTT8_FINAL.pdf

TUBERCULOSIS: World statistics

The two most deadly infectious diseases worldwide, HIV and TB, claim the lives of nearly 10,000 people every day. Despite major advances in the treatment of HIV, the AIDS epidemic remains an unprecedented public health challenge, with an estimated 33 million people currently living with the virus and 2.7 million new HIV infections a year. And although scientists discovered a cure for TB more than five decades ago, there is more tuberculosis in the world today than ever before. Today, one-third of the world’s population is infected with M. tuberculosis, and there were an estimated 9.4 million new TB cases in 2008. In tandem, HIV infection and TB create a deadly synergy. TB is the number one cause of death among people with HIV. HIV/AIDS has reignited the TB epidemic across the developing world, fueling increases in MDR-TB and XDR-TB as well.
http://sciencespeaks.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/save-the-date-briefing-on-stemming-the-deadly-twin-epidemics-of-hiv-and-tuberculosis/

TB: California, San Diego/Tijuana crossing point

Once a disease thought to have been eradicated across most of the developed world, today the incidence of tuberculosis (TB) is again on the rise. As the most heavily trafficked land border crossing in the world with close to 60 million crossings a year and an unparalleled level of bidirectional border crossers, the San Diego-Tijuana border region is particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases such as TB. The incidence of TB in San Diego remains one of the highest in the nation and was double the U.S. national average in 2007. The incidence of TB in Tijuana is over 2.8 times the Mexican national average.The report identified several concrete steps that could be taken by the government, business and the philanthropic sector to reduce the incidence of TB in the San Diego-Tijuana border region by investing in laboratory diagnostics, prevention, infection control, expanded surveillance and expanded cooperation of area employers in TB health education, diagnosis and treatment. In the case of laboratory diagnostics no such services currently exist in Baja California yet could be provided for less than $213,000 a year permitting the state to accurately identify, detect and diagnose tuberculosis cases using cultures and drug susceptibility testing.Additional key findings.- Over 600 cases of pulmonary TB were confirmed and reported annually in Tijuana in 2006 and 2007 with an overall rate of 46 per 100,000 inhabitants, which is substantially higher than rates in neighboring Mexican states.- Since 2000 there has been an average of over 300 new TB cases per year in San Diego County, of which nearly 40 percent were born in Mexico according to the San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency.
http://www.pr-inside.com/international-community-foundation-releases-r1840701.htm

TB: Nigeria statistics

Nigeria has the highest burden of tuberculosis in Africa. So it is quite correct to say Nigeria has one of the highest risks of contacting tuberculosis, because an individual with tuberculosis, according to the public health scientific information available, can affect 1, 12 to 15 persons per year. Therefore, that there is high risk of getting Tuberculosis when you stay with people with the disease.
Why is it so, is it because we are careless or is there anything we should have done as a country that we have failed to its with regards to preventing the occurrence and spread?
Basically, the reason tuberculosis is a big health problem in our country is because Nigeria is also a country with the highest burden of HIV/AIDS, in sub-saharan Africa, along with South Africa. And because Nigeria has got huge reservoir of people infected with HIV/AIDS, it implies that many immune systems are affected and that predisposes to inciting or activating an existing tuberculosis legion in the land.
http://www.leadershipnigeria.com/columns/views/interview/14227-there-is-high-rate-of-tuberculosis-in-nigeria--dr-kadir