World Bank calls for investment in tuberculosis control

The World Bank has said that countries with world's highest numbers of TB cases could earn significantly more than they spend on TB diagnosis and treatment if they signed onto a global plan to sharply reduce the numbers of TB-related deaths.
According to a World Bank research report on 'Economic benefits of global investments in tuberculosis control', highly affected African countries could gain up to nine times their investments in TB control, the Zambia News and Information Services reported in Lusaka.
The report indicated that the economic cost of TB-related deaths (including HIV co-infection) in Sub-Saharan Africa from 2006 to 2015 is estimated at $519 billion when there is no effective TB treatment as prescribed by the 'Stop TB Strategy' of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
It said that by sickening or killing working-age adults, TB imposes a heavy cost on people's incomes as well as national economies.
In Zambia, the report said, adult deaths among small maize and cotton farmers caused crop yields to fall by roughly 15 percent. "However, if these same countries in Sub-Saharan Africa were to offer such treatment to TB patients, in keeping with a global plan to halve the prevalence and death rates by 2015 relative to 1990 figures, countries could see their economic benefits exceed their costs by about nine times over", the report said.
The global plan to stop TB would cost $2 billion a year for TB diagnosis and treatment until 2015 in Africa and $6 billion worldwide.
The global plan to stop TB, launched in January 2006, sets forth a roadmap for treating 50 million people for TB and enrolling 3 million patients who have both TB and human immune deficiency infection on anti-retroviral therapy over the next 10 years, saving about 14 million lives.
The report said that despite recent gains in fighting TB, there were still 8.8 million new cases and 1.6 million deaths from the disease in 2005.
Without treatment, two-thirds of smear-positive cases die within five to eight years, with most dying within 18 months of being infected, said the report.