Strong Link Between AIDS And TB

The World Health Organization estimates that of the people who died of TB in 2007, over a quarter were aids sufferers.

Previous figures were based on fifteen countries but this latest survey used data from 64, making it a much more accurate piece of information.

Tuberculosis causes many deaths and the poorer nations of the world are ravaged by the disease.

It is a bacterial infection affecting the lungs but it can be treated successfully with a variety of medicines. In most affluent countries it has albeit been eliminated and rarely causes death.

This data newly reported by the WHO indicates that there is a much greater connection between the HIV virus and TB that was previously understood. The population of Africa is more affected than any other country on the globe.

The statistics show that in 2007, there were over nine million new cases of tuberculosis throughout the world of which nearly 15 % were infected by the HIV virus.

The latter, attacks people’s immune systems making them highly susceptible to all kinds of deadly infections. Anyone with the aids virus is twenty times more likely to get TB.

Wafaa El-Sadr, professor of medicine at the University of Columbia, admits that the medical community, have for a long time believed that the two diseases are often seen together.

He enforces the view that addressing the problem of TB in the developing world must be carried in unison with focusing on HIV.

The figure should not cause panic as they don’t indicate a rise in HIV patients contracting tuberculosis or dying of the disease, it would suggest that more cases are being detected thanks to the increase of testing.