AIDS and TB Team Up to Kill Even More, Group Says

On Tuesday, the Open Society Institute released a report highlighting the prevalence of co-infection with HIV and tuberculosis. Each year, TB kills 2 million people, and 9 million more become infected, said the report. It noted, however, that doctors often fail to diagnose TB in AIDS patients.

In a telephone briefing with reporters, Stephen Lewis, UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa, called for more action against the "double plague." Co-infection with the two diseases, Lewis said, is almost "always an irreversible formula, cause for death." "TB is in fact the most common cause of death for people living with AIDS. Ninety-nine percent of those infections and deaths are in the developing world."

"When people have AIDS, it is difficult to diagnose TB," said Ezio Santos Filho, a Brazilian lawyer and activist who contracted HIV in 1985 and became infected with TB in 1992. "Normally, they don't have all the symptoms, all the typical characteristics that people without AIDS would have. People cough less and people have less sputum when they have AIDS."

According to the report, only one-third of all TB smear tests in HIV patients produce an accurate positive result. Lewis said, "You could do it with a chest x-ray, but obviously that kind of technology is not readily available to the developing world."

"And for people living with AIDS," the report said, "even a short delay in accessing TB treatment can be fatal."

Lewis and Open Society staffers hope to use the report to raise the issue of HIV/TB co-infection at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto next week.

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