More TB cases slipping through detection net

The WHO recently warned that more new tuberculosis cases are slipping through the detection net, as countries fail to keep up with rapid progress made in earlier years.
“After some years of good trends for tuberculosis control, 2006 documents a slowing of progress; the rate at which new cases were detected increased only slightly compared to recent years,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said.
“This slowdown in progress comes at a time when numbers are still way too high,” she added. The WHO estimates that only 61 per cent of all TB cases worldwide
are registered.
In 2006, some 9.2 million new cases of TB were detected against 9.1 million in 2005, said the WHO in its annual report on TB control. The WHO estimates that including non-detected cases, there were 14.4 million cases of the disease worldwide in 2006. Between 2001 and 2005, detection rates were increasing by six per cent a year, but in 2006, this rate was halved to three per cent.
“This is not a good sign because our target is to detect all cases that exist. There is 39 per cent that we are unable to find, but which we think is there,” said Mario Raviglione, who is Director of the WHO’s Stop TB Department.