WHO urges alert against TB

THE World Health Organisation yesterday urged western Europe to be alert against drug-resistant tuberculosis in the wake of an “alarming rise” in the number of cases in the region.

The WHO hopes its plan, published yesterday, will prevent 263,000 cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and the more lethal extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) between 2011 and 2015.

“TB is an old disease that never went away,” said Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO regional director for Europe. “Now it is evolving with a vengeance and we have to find new weapons to fight it.”