Global health impact reported that an estimated 910 000 lives were saved globally over six years by improving collaboration between TB and HIV services that protect people living with HIV from TB.
In 2004, WHO proposed the initial guidance on collaboration between TB and HIV activities and there was a 12-fold increase in the number of HIV people screened for TB. The number of HIV people screened for TB in 2010 was over 2.3 million. On the other hand, number of TB people screened for HIV rose from approximately half a million in 2005 to 2.2 million in 2010, a five fold increase!
These success stories have triggered WHO to release an updated global policy for joint prevention, diagnosis and treatment of TB and HIV.
Since HIV being a disease of the immune system, people with HIV are much more likely to be infected with a variety of other diseases like HCV and TB.
The new policy calls for routine HIV testing for TB patients, people with symptoms of TB, and their partners or family members; provision of co-trimoxazole, a cost-effective medicine to prevent against lung or other infections for all TB patients who are infected with HIV; starting all TB patients with HIV on antiretroviral therapy (ART) as soon as possible (and within the first 2 weeks of starting anti-TB treatment) regardless of immune system measurements; evidence based methods to prevent the acquisition of HIV for TB patients, their families and communities.
More than 100 countries are now testing more than half of their TB patients for HIV. Progress was especially noteworthy in Africa where the number of countries testing more than half their TB patients for HIV rose from five in 2005 to 31 in 2010.
Click here to read the entire 36 pages policy document
The new WHO Policy for joint prevention, diagnosis and treatment of TB and HIV will be presented in detail on 5 March at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), in Seattle, Washington.
Source: WHO
