A US-published study on Wednesday said China faces a 'serious epidemic' of drug-resistant tuberculosis, based on the first-ever nationwide estimate of the size of the problem there. "In 2007, one third of the patients with new cases of tuberculosis and one half of the patients with previously treated tuberculosis had drug-resistant disease," said the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Even more, the prevalence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB in new cases (5.7 percent) was nearly twice the global average, said the study.
Using World Health Organization figures as a basis for comparison, "China has the highest annual number of cases of MDR tuberculosis in the world -- a quarter of the cases worldwide," it added.
The data came from a survey of more than 4,600 Chinese people who were recently diagnosed or treated for TB.
In China, over a million new tuberculosis infections occur each year, a large chunk of the estimated nine million cases worldwide annually.
Known formally as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, TB spreads through the air when infected people cough up bacteria. TB kills about 1.5 million people worldwide each year.
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According to an accompanying editorial by Johns Hopkins University infectious disease specialist Richard Chaisson, the growth of drug-resistant TB presents an "enormous challenge."
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Chaisson said the findings highlight the need for faster testing, and for new cases of TB to be tested for signs of drug resistance, not just recurrent forms.
Source-AFP