A world of cities and the end of TB

Amit Prasada, Alex Ross, Paul Rosenberg, Christopher Dye
Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg 2016; 110: 151–152
Published online: February 2016

Abstract / Resumen:

Forty-three million people with TB have been successfully treated by combination chemotherapy between 2000 and 2014. Globally, TB incidence has been falling by 1.65% annually over the past decade, barely satisfying the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reversing incidence rates by 2015. Looking to the future, WHO’s End TB Strategy envisions a world free of TB. This includes ambitious targets to reduce TB deaths by 95% and to cut new cases by 90% between 2015 and 2035. In 2013, 9 million new cases of TB were reported and 1.5 million people died from the disease. TB ranks as a leading cause of death, alongside HIV.1 Every country continues to have a national TB program because every country still has TB. Achieving the End TB Strategy targets will require a mix of optimizing the effectiveness of current TB control programs and the development of more potent drugs, diagnostics and vaccines. Although directly transmitted infections, such as TB, are more easily spread under crowded conditions, urbanization provides an opportunity to combat infectious diseases like TB. As the proportion of people living in urban areas is projected to increase from 50% in 2008 to 66% in 2050, more people will potentially have access to better infrastructure and services, including housing and medical care that help combat poverty and inequality. In China in 2010, for example, not only was the prevalence of bacteriologically positive TB in urban areas (73 per 100 000) less than half that of rural areas (163 per 100 000), the rate of decrease in prevalence between 2000 and 2010 was nearly twice as fast….

Keywords / Palabras clave:
Health inequality, Sustainable Development Goals, Tuberculosis, Urbanization, Global Health.

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