COMPLACENCY in Europe's richest countries is leading to the unchecked spread of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, the World Health Organization warned this week. With around 81,000 new MD-R TB cases each year, the WHO has launched an emergency plan to tackle the crisis.
"The danger with developed countries is to forget about TB, and to assume that it was eradicated years ago," says Lucica Ditiu, executive secretary of the WHO's Stop TB Partnership. She cites the example of a nurse in Rome who recently spread MD-R TB to 60 infants before it was diagnosed.
The WHO's $5-billion action plan aims to prevent 120,000 deaths and 250,000 cases of MD-R TB by 2015. It would save $7 billion by preventing ordinary TB progressing to MD-R TB, which is much more expensive to treat.
The plan will improve diagnosis and treatment of MD-R TB so that by 2015 prevention strategies are in place in all 53 countries of the WHO's European region.
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