MDR and XDR-TB are associated with high mortality, are a threat to healthcare workers, prohibitively expensive to treat and are therefore a serious public health problem.
those who need palliative care, live in the community because hospitals are full.
In addition to new drugs, there is a need to ensure that patients with incurable diseases are treated with dignity and can afford the care they need, the co-author of the study said.
MDR and XDR-TB are associated with high mortality, are a threat to healthcare workers, prohibitively expensive to treat and are therefore a serious public health problem.
The study said mortality rate in these cases of tuberculosis is extremely high, around 40 per cent for patients with MDR-TB and 60 per cent for those with XDR-TB.
Of the USD 6.3 billion made available in 2014 to respond to the global TB epidemic, about a third of the amount was for MDR-TB (although drug resistant TB forms only 5 per cent of the total caseload), it said.
"Resistance to anti-TB drugs is a global problem that threatens to derail efforts to eradicate the disease. Even when the drugs work, TB is difficult to cure and requires months of treatment with a cocktail of drugs," lead author of the study, Keertan Dheda of University of Cape Town, said.
"When resistance occurs, the treatment can take years and the drugs used have unpleasant and sometimes serious side effects. Cure rates for drug resistant TB are poor and people can remain infectious and at risk of spreading the disease," Dheda said.
Improved diagnostic tests are on the horizon, but there is a need to increase accuracy, use those for active case finding and eventually make those available in low-income countries so as to inform treatment decisions and preserve the efficacy of any new antibiotic drugs for TB, the lead author of the study said.
TB is caused by a Mycobacterium tuberculosis and is treated with a combination of antibiotics. Extensive overuse and abuse of antibiotics worldwide has led to a rise in bacteria that are drug resistant.
Until recently, it was thought that drug-resistant strains of TB were less transmissible, and that MDR and XDR-TB was mainly acquired by individuals as a result of poor compliance to treatment.
However, recent studies have challenged this belief and in most regions of the world, drug-resistant TB is now predominantly caused by transmission.
An estimated 95.9 per cent of new TB cases are infected with MDR-TB strains due to the drug resistant bacteria spreading from one person to another.
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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