There’s good news when it comes to treating tuberculosis. New therapies are on their way to treat patients with hard-to-treat drug-resistant forms of the infectious lung disease, the director of the World Health Organization’s Stop TB Department says.
"In terms of treatment, possibly in the next 2-3 years, we will have for the first time I would say since the 1970s, two or three compounds that are effective against multi-drug resistant TB,” Mario Raviglione told a news conference. “So this will give us an extra weapon.”
If detected and treated early, tuberculosis can be cured in six months, but the disease still afflicted 9.4 million new patients last year and kills 1.7 million people annually, especially in the Third World. Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, MDR-TB, can occur when patients do not take the prescribed drug regimen properly, enabling the pathogen to develop a resistance to the drugs.
Hope for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis
There’s good news when it comes to treating tuberculosis. New therapies are on their way to treat patients with hard-to-treat drug-resistant forms of the infectious lung disease, the director of the World Health Organization’s Stop TB Department says.
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