Nov 2 : A deadly combination of HIV and tuberculosis (TB) is rapidly spreading in sub-Saharan Africa and has gone largely unnoticed so far.

Health systems, moreover, are not adequately equipped to diagnose, treat or contain the co-epidemic due to unanswered scientific and medical questions, according to a report issued Thursday by The Forum for Collaborative HIV Research here.

The report notes that approximately one-third of the world’s 40 million people with HIV/AIDS are also infected with TB and the mortality rate due to the co-epidemic is five-fold higher than that for tuberculosis alone.

“The eye of the storm is in sub-Saharan Africa, where half of all new TB cases are HIV co-infected, and where drug-resistant TB is silently spreading,” said Veronica Miller, one of the authors of the report.

“Unlike bird flu, the global threat of HIV-TB is not hypothetical. It is here now. But the science and coordination needed to stop it are utterly insufficient,” she said.

The HIV-TB co-infection was first detected 23 years ago. Without proper treatment, 90 percent of people living with HIV die within months of contracting TB.(IANS)

Tags:public-health