Society
China fights growing problem of tuberculosis
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-01-06 09:10
 |
Large Medium Small |
"There are many reasons for China's drug-resistant TB problem. Patients stop taking drugs when they feel better, maybe after a month. Some have no money for drugs if the treatment is not free and they don't even know this is a serious disease," said Lin.
"Some are so afraid of stigma they don't see a doctor, they just buy drugs over the counter."
TB affects mostly poor people, who typically live in places where healthcare is not easily accessible. Many patients pay not only for treatment but also transportation, and any chronic, long-term disease can bankrupt entire families.
Li Jiachuen, 45, quickly ran out of money and had to borrow from relatives and friends after he was diagnosed with TB.
"I don't take drugs now. I don't even have money to pay off my 20,000 yuan debt. I spent thousands of yuan on diagnosis and treatment and even more on transportation," Li said.
|
||||
But in China, diagnosis and treatment is only free in specialist TB outpatient clinics. General hospitals, which have been self-financing since the 1990s, impose charges.
"TB is a political problem because it is infectious. It has societal impact, it is a threat to public health ... free treatment is very important," said Zhong, who also heads the Anti-TB Research Institute in China's southern Guangdong province.
The world's only TB vaccine is 100 years old and there has been no new TB drug for more than 40 years. But the resurgence of TB due to AIDS has forced the West back into TB research in the last 20 years and a string of experimental drugs and vaccines are now in the pipeline.
Chinese scientists are working on a new class of TB drugs based on an old drug called clofazimine, used in the past to treat leprosy, said Ann Ginsberg, chief medical officer of the TB Alliance, a US-based non-profit scientific group that pulls together partners to develop new TB drugs.
"They (scientists) found a very promising lead compound and we hope within the next six months ... it will come into formal pre-clinical development and get the formal animal and non human studies that are required to convince the regulators it can go onto people," said Ginsberg.
