President Clinton noted that, "Today is World Tuberculosis Day. It marks the day the bacteria which causes TB was discovered 118 years ago. And, yet, even though this is 118-year-old knowledge, in the year 2000, TB kills more people than ever before, including one almost every minute here in India….

"These are human tragedies, economic calamities, and far more than crises for you, they are crises for the world. The spread of disease is the one global problem for which … no nation is immune."

India has more TB cases than any other country in the world. Every year, 2 million people in India develop TB and nearly 500,000 die from it – more than 1,000 every day. The disease has become a major barrier to social and economic development. More than 300,000 children are forced to leave school each year because of their parents' tuberculosis, and more than 100,000 women with tuberculosis are rejected by their families due to social stigma. It is estimated that the economic cost of TB to India is more than US $2 billion each year.

To meet this challenge, India has recently expanded its use of the WHO-recommended strategy, extending it to more than 15% of the country today. One year ago, only 2% of TB patients were treated with the DOTS strategy. Because of this rapid expansion, India now has the second largest DOTS programme in the world. As of World TB Day, 24 March 2000, the Indian DOTS programme has given approximately 10 million doses of DOTS to 250,000 patients on DOTS treatment programmes.

Not only has India's new TB programme expanded rapidly, it has achieved excellent results in the process. Most notably, death rates have dropped substantially. In programmes not using the new TB treatment strategy, 29% of the patients eventually die from the disease. Under the new strategy, death rates are only 4%.

"Where DOTS is not used, patients are seven times more likely to die from tuberculosis," said Dr Arata Kochi, Director of the Stop TB Initiative, which is housed at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Today, on the occasion of World TB Day, WHO and the International Union Against TB & Lung Disease warned that if countries do not act quickly to strengthen their control of TB, the multidrug resistant strains that have cost New York City and Russia hundreds of lives and more than $1 billion each will continue to emerge in other parts of the world.

"The best way to prevent drug resistance from developing is by ensuring that people infected with TB finish the full, six-month course of their DOTS treatment. That is the only way we can ensure that these people do not later develop resistance to one or more of the five anti-TB drugs currently available," said Kochi.

With no new TB drugs on the near horizon, ensuring that people are cured of the TB before they develop drug resistance is all the more important. "Otherwise, we are condemning them to certain death," added Dr Kochi.

For more information, contact, in the United States, Jim Palmer at +1-202-262-9823; in the United Kingdom, Janice Muir at +44-171-407-3313; in the Netherlands, Linda Verkerk at +31-70-318-4405; at WHO Geneva, Gregory Hartl, +41-22-791-4458; at WHO, Delhi, Ms Harsaran Pandey, tel (+91 11) 332 7971, e-mail Pandeyh@whosea.org. A summary of "Anti-Tuberculosis Drug Resistance in the World, Report No. 2", Fact Sheets, and electronic press statements can be found at http://www.stoptb.org.