Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
BBC News - Tuesday, 21 September, 2004
The World Health Organization and UNAids issued the call to a health conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Of an estimated 25 million Africans living with HIV, up to four million will develop TB during their lives.
But the WHO and UNAids warn national TB programmes are only treating half of HIV positive patients with active TB.
Without treatment, HIV infected people with TB typically die within months. Yet national TB programmes in Africa are currently treating fewer than half of HIV-positive people with active TB.
In some regions of Africa, 75% of TB patients are infected by HIV.
Yet in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Uganda and Zimbabwe, fewer than 40% of people living with both TB and HIV are receiving proper TB treatment.
In Nigeria, less than 10% of these cases are receiving proper TB treatment.
This is despite the fact that HIV-positive people respond just as well to TB treatment as people who are HIV-negative, and the cost of TB drugs is as low as US$10 per patient.
In addition, very few TB patients are currently offered an HIV test, and only a handful receive anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, which the WHO says should be standard treatment for HIV-infected TB patients.
'Collaborating to kill'
UNAids and the WHO say combining TB and HIV healthcare is one of the best ways to improve access to ARV medications, and to help reach the "3 by 5" target of three million people on HIV treatment by the end of 2005.
Dr Peter Piot, UNAids Executive Director, said: "If we jointly tackle TB and HIV, we can be much more effective in controlling both diseases."
Richard Feachem, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, added: "We cannot talk seriously about fighting Aids while ignoring TB. In Africa, TB and HIV collaborate to kill."
He said the Global Fund would modify its proposal guidelines to request that Aids proposals also include a strategy to address TB, and likewise TB proposals also include HIV/Aids.
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