Africa epidemic: African health ministers have declared a tuberculosis emergency, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced.
"The declaration is a response to an epidemic that has quadrupled the annual number of new TB cases in 18 African countries since 1990 and continues to rise across the continent, killing more than half a million people every year," the WHO said in a statement after four days of talks in Mozambique.
Although cheap and easy to treat, tuberculosis is a leading cause of death among people who are HIV-positive, accounting for about 11 per cent of AIDS deaths worldwide.
It poses a headache in managing treatment of HIV, a huge problem for Africa, which is the focus of the world's worst HIV/Aids epidemic.
"TB is the forgotten disease but it is an epidemic of an unprecedented magnitude. In Africa, there isn't much awareness that TB can be cured," said Marcos Espinal, executive secretary of the advocacy group Stop TB Partnership.
"It largely affects the poor and the problem is that they don't know the symptoms, they live in crowded areas and have little access to education. TB spreads easily through the air. This decision will galvanise action to help battle the disease," Mr Espinal said.
Declaration of a TB emergency should unlock more money from the G8 and the Global Fund from which developing countries draw much of their cash for fighting Aids and other diseases, the WHO says.
"It means that we will have to work to find the resources to fight TB and we will need to integrate this in the national health plans of our countries," Mr Martinho Djedje, Mozambique's deputy national health director said.
Someone who is HIV-positive and infected with TB is five to seven times more likely to develop active TB than someone infected with TB but not infected with HIV, the WHO said.
The declaration was part of a broader programme which the WHO has outlined calling for $2.2 billion in new funding for TB control in Africa in 2006-2007, the WHO added.