GENEVA - Some 10 million people in 78 countries have received anti-tuberculosis drugs from a global drug supply programme since its inception six years ago, the World Health Organisation said Tuesday.
"This is an important milestone, because getting anti-TB drugs back to people who need them and making sure they complete their treatment is the only way to break the back of the epidemic," said Marcos Espinal, executive secretary of the Stop TB Partnership.
"It is also the best weapon we have for preventing a potentially massive new epidemic of drug resistant TB," he added.
The partnership of agencies and public and private donors is aiming to treat a total of 50 million patients by 2015.
In 2005, 8.8 million new cases of TB were recorded in the world, as well as 1.6 million deaths.
The joint procurement and distribution programme is aimed at countering infrequent and low quality drug supplies to TB patients which hampered efforts to tackle the disease in poor countries.
It has focused so far on supplying "first-line" drugs to treat classical TB, but was widened last year to more costly "second line" drugs that are aimed at countering a growing wave of drug resistant strains of the disease.
05/29/2007 15:10 GMT