
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 15, 1993                   TAG: 9311150019
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

BEATEN DISEASE IS BACK

Public complacency and the ease of international travel have led to a resurgence of tuberculosis in the industrialized world that is threatening to become "a health catastrophe," a U.N. agency has concluded.

The World Health Organization, in an annual report on the disease to be released today, says "most people in Europe and North America have been watching other crises" - including AIDS - while tuberculosis has become "the world's most neglected health crisis."

In an advance copy of the report, WHO concludes that "TB has returned to the industrial world with a vengeance in new and even deadlier forms."

Tuberculosis, an often fatal disease of the respiratory tract characterized by fever and weight loss, is one of the oldest diseases known to man. It is turning up "sometimes in a pernicious, multi-drug-resistant form that is harder and more expensive to treat," the organization says, adding that "AIDS has certainly facilitated its spread because it destroys the cells which keep the TB bacteria dormant."

The return of tuberculosis to wealthier nations is particularly disheartening, according to the report, because most people assumed it had been wiped out in the 1950s.

"In reality, while TB was virtually eliminated in industrialized countries, nothing changed in the developing world," the report said. "Tens of millions of people have been dying from TB for decades. Each year it kills more than 3 million people . . . more than all the adult deaths from all other infectious diseases combined, including AIDS."

The report said that TB had been declining at a rate of 6 percent in the United States until 1985, when it began to rise again. Nationwide, nearly 15 million people are now infected with TB.

Aside from public complacency, which has resulted in inadequate resources to combat tuberculosis, WHO attributed the disease's resurgence to increased world travel and to a rise in immigration to the United States and Europe.

"Twenty-seven percent of all new cases in the United States last year were in victims who had recently come from another country," the report said.

The study added that "an increase in TB funding and change in direction is the only way to avert a health catastrophe."

by CNB