AFP, The Hague :
Thousands of scientists, activists and disease survivors Saturday wrap up a global conference on lung health dominated by the announcement of several breakthroughs in the battle against tuberculosis.
The following is a round-up of developments in how doctors and aid workers are tackling the world’s deadliest infectious disease.
Some strains of TB – a severe lung infection that can spread to the brain – are resistant to antibiotics and have been historically extremely difficult, and painful, to treat.
Several countries including South Africa, which has among the highest tuberculosis burden in the world, announced that a new drug had shown astonishing success against multidrug-resistant TB.
Bedaquiline, which in countries such as Belarus cured 80 percent of patients, was hailed by experts as a “game changer”, and can replace months of excruciating and often ineffective injections for sufferers.
In terms of prevention, major headway has been made on a new vaccine against TB, the first in almost a century.
GlaxoSmithKline showed in a trial in three African nations that its vaccine had a 54 percent effectiveness in subjects who already have TB but are yet to become sick with it. “Such a level of efficacy could really provide an impact on global health,” Marie-Ange Demoitie, who leads the vaccine development for GSK, told AFP.
In a last minute announcement, scientists at the conference unveiled a revolutionary new way of screening children for tuberculosis. They say the new technique, which involves analysing stool samples of infants, will prevent hundreds of thousands each year from contracting the disease.
