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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 18, 1995                   TAG: 9501180073
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C-5   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Newsday
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TUBERCULOSIS ON RISE WORLDWIDE

Tuberculosis is on the increase all over the world, and at least 3 million people will die of TB this year, according to a startling report to be released today by the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Worldwide, the number of TB cases climbed from 7.5 million in 1990 to nearly 9 million expected this year. In projections larger than those published elsewhere, the scientists said that more than 10 million people will be coming down with tuberculosis annually by the year 2000, and that 3.5 million of them will die of the disease.

Driving this global surge in tuberculosis - a disease policy-makers once thought would be eradicated by 2000 - are the AIDS epidemic, refugee migrations, immigration, poverty and inadequate public health efforts, the experts say.

``The major obstacle to making more rapid progress remains the limited financial resources available for global tuberculosis control,'' WHO's Mario Raviglione and Arata Kochi and the CDC's Dixie Snider write in today's Journal of the American Medical Association. Treatment is proving increasingly difficult because TB bacteria are developing resistance to the readily available antibiotics.

But if money can be found, TB can be brought under control, said Dr. Barry Bloom of the Albert Einstein Medical School in New York City, a leading TB expert. In New York City, where multi-drug-resistant TB reached epidemic proportions in 1991, millions of dollars have been spent to identify and treat TB cases. Last year. the city health department was able to announce a 15 percent decrease in active TB.

by CNB