Europe failing to tackle drug-resistant tuberculosis

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Europe failing to tackle drug-resistant tuberculosis

By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent LONDON (Reuters) - Cases of tuberculosis are falling in Europe but a failure to properly diagnose and treat dangerous drug-resistant strains of the contagious disease means it is far from under control, health experts said on Tuesday. Every day, almost 1,000 people across the 53 countries of the World Health Organization's (WHO) European region fall sick with TB, and multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB pose a serious risk to the goal of eliminating it by 2050, the experts said. Data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the WHO's regional office showed that drug-resistant TB strains affect at least 76,000 people in the region. At 25 percent, the treatment success rate for XDR TB patients is even lower.

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