Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 31, 1992 TAG: 9201310058
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
TB BACK, `OUT OF CONTROL'
A new and dangerous type of tuberculosis is "out of control," the American Lung Association said Thursday. It urged Congress to appropriate at least $91 million to combat a disease once believed to have been conquered."Alas, TB is back," Dr. Lee B. Reichman, president-elect of the association, said at a news conference.
Fran Du Melle, deputy managing director of the association, said it is urging approval of a $66 million appropriation recommended by President Bush in his budget, plus $15 million to help states and cities fight the disease and a minimum of $10 million for federally funded research.
Experts at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta have said that outbreaks of potentially deadly and drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis could become increasingly hard to combat as they spread among AIDS victims and others with weakened immune systems.
Outbreaks already have occurred in New York City, Michigan, Florida and the New York state prison system.
Reichman, director of the pulmonary division of the New Jersey Medical School in Bergen, said HIV-infected people who develop latent tuberculosis have at least a 10 percent chance of developing an active case of the disease within a year.
He said the drug-resistant strains of the infectious disease can be spread to health-care workers and others in hospitals.
Reichman said 50 percent of tuberculosis patients once died, even after treatment that often kept them in a hospital five to 10 years.
After the discovery of drugs to cure the disease, "society, feeling that TB was coming under control, turned its attention to other problems and priorities."
"Front-page articles and national sound bites and talk shows remind us that we have a new, powerful and dangerous type of TB that is out of control," Reichman said.
Consequently, Du Melle said, "we again turn to the policy arena to pursue initiatives to address the resurgence of tuberculosis in the United States."
She said the number of cases began to increase in 1985, for the first time since national reporting was first required in 1953. From 1989 to 1990, the increase was 9 percent, the biggest ever. The number of cases was 25,701.
"Funding remained stable, an indication that the federal government did not recognize the significance of this increase or the need for any additional response," she said.
Du Melle said Congress appropriated $20 million for tuberculosis control in 1969, but spending on the disease dropped sharply in subsequent years.
In 1982, Congress authorized $1 million for tuberculosis control on the recommendation of the association. By 1985, the amount had increased to $5 million.