Tuberculosis can be eradicated within several years if more funds are invested

This is the deadliest disease in the world, causing more than 1.6 million deaths a year.

It is a chronic lung disease that can be prevented and healed if diagnosed at an early stage.

Each year, more than 10 million people suffer from it worldwide.

This is a huge economic burden in developing countries and in developed countries”, said special United Nations administrator for tuberculosis Eric Goosby.

“We need to launch a new prevention strategy. We don't need any missile science, but common sense,” he stressed.

Although a year kills as much as AIDS and malaria combined, a new vaccine against tuberculosis has not for more than a century. At the same time, research into tuberculosis is ten times less than AIDS.

A group of scientists from 13 countries said that for financing Tuberculous research, the figures at $3 billion a year must be fourfold, Kosovo Preress broadcasts.

Every third patient dead is from India, and only in that country will the death toll be reduced by one third, with better access to treatment and prevention tests in the highest-risk communities of the disease.

That would cost, scientists say, $290 million a year, and the economic losses caused by tuberculosis are 32 billion.

It's important that we have access to new research and new tools in the fight against tuberculosis. The goal is to eradicate the disease and we are now reducing it by only 1.5 to 2 percent per year”, said Paula Fujiwara, scientific director at the International Union for Combating Tuberculosis and lung diseases.

It should be noted that scientists achieve successes even with current tools available.

In October last, 80 percent of the patients in Belarus were cured with a new method of tuberculosis treatment. The procedure was later repeated in several other countries, and similar results were achieved.

pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline launched a study last month showing that the new vaccine under way was successful at 54 percent of participants in previous tests.

“Of course we need new drugs, as the disease evolves”, Goosby said.

“We must, as a global health community, predict the development of resistance to medicine and continue to work on the new”, he adds.