Co-epidemic of HIV-TB spreading in Africa, says US report

The largely unnoticed collision of the global epidemics of HIV and tuberculosis has created a deadly co-epidemic that is rapidly spreading in sub-Saharan Africa. However, health systems cannot adequately diagnose, treat or contain the co-epidemic due to unanswered scientific and medical questions, according to a report issued by the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research.

Approximately one-third of the world's 40 million people with HIV/AIDS are co-infected with TB, and the mortality rate for HIV-TB co-infection is five-fold higher than that for tuberculosis alone. This situation is made yet more urgent by the surging rates of multi-drug resistant TB in some areas with high HIV prevalence, according to the report.

"Now the eye of the storm is in sub-Saharan Africa, where half of new TB cases are HIV co-infected, and where drug-resistant TB is silently spreading," said Veronica Miller, co-author of the report and director of The Forum for Collaborative HIV Research, a global independent public-private partnership comprised of researchers, patient advocates, and government and industry representatives. "Unlike bird flu, the global threat of HIV/TB is not hypothetical. It is here now. But the science and coordination needed to stop it are utterly insufficient," she added,