12 June 2008
New York — The first Forum of Global Leaders for HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis has reiterated the need to speed up large scale combination of activities to control both pandemics, given the increasing link between the two in recent years.
Gathered in New York this week for a United Nations General Assembly high level meeting on AIDS, the leaders admitted that one cannot fight against HIV/AIDS unless it goes together with the fight against TB, which has been the main cause of death among people living with HIV.
According to recent findings of the World Health Organization (WHO), TB is the most common opportunist disease among people living with HIV during the first three months of treatment with antiretroviral drugs.
In 2006, for instance, about 250,000 people across the world died because of the association between HIV and TB, and the number of new cases of TB has trebled in the last 15 years in countries with high levels of HIV prevalence.
The leaders' main concern is that the world is currently facing new strains of TB, multi-resistant to drugs, and when this kind of TB hits people living with HIV, it is lethal in about 90 per cent of cases.
Thus the challenge, according to former South African President Nelson Mandela, is to improve the quality of integrated services to control both diseases.
The meeting found that the seriousness of the situation is a great constraint on socio-economic development, and reiterated the call for integrated actions against both diseases. Commenting on the situation, the United Nations Special Envoy for the control of tuberculosis, former Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio, criticised existing programmes for lack of integration, which leads to a failure in obtaining good results.
For his part, Mozambican President Armando Guebuza stressed the need to take into account this integration of strategies in the fight against HIV/AIDS, saying that this would make a better use of the sparse resources.
Addressing reporters shortly before he left, back to Mozambique, he said that antiretroviral treatment should be combined with other components, including nutrition.
Mozambique's strategy is still focused on prevention but, said Guebuza, it is necessary to ensure that infected people have access to antiretroviral treatment.
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