Tuberculosis Treatment in Democratic Republic of Congo Well Short of UN Standards

Etienne Bahati, director of the TB program in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said Tuesday that the nation's cure rate for TB falls short of the standards set by the World Health Organization. WHO says the cure rate should be at least 85 percent. Bahati said the latest figures show that only 70 percent of 66,906 cases were cured in 2001. About 20 million people in the DRC, many of them female, are at risk of TB because of poor sanitary conditions, poverty and ignorance of protective measures, Bahati said. Henriette Wemba Nyama, WHO's representative in the DRC, said that for World TB Day the organization had focused on TB as part of UN programs to fight HIV/AIDS, since "tuberculosis is one of the main opportunistic diseases in AIDS cases."

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