Global lung health meet begins Wednesday in Liverpool

The 47th Union World Conference on Lung Health will begin in Liverpool on Wednesday with a focus on ‘confronting resistance’ which is a key challenge to end tuberculosis, a highly infectious lung disease.

TB is one of the oldest diseases to infect humans and now it ranks alongside HIV/AIDS as the top infectious killer worldwide.

South Asia contributes 41 percent of the total global TB burden in the world. The rate is 225 per 100,000 population in Bangladesh.

The WHO says multidrug resistance TB or MDR-TB comprises three percent of new TB cases globally. In 2014, it estimated 480,000 such cases. Bangladesh estimates the MDR-TB rate 6 per 100,000 people. 

TB is fully curable if properly treated. But in case of the MDR-TB, which is the outcome of mismanagement of TB treatment, the cure rate is 50 percent.

The MDR-TB treatment is also comparatively difficult as patients have to take drugs for two years, compared with six to nine months for general TB.

The WHO has recently approved a shorter treatment for MDR-TB to nine months from two years after Bangladesh study showed success.

Last month, the UN landmark declaration to fight the threat of antimicrobial resistance placed MDR-TB on the international agenda. The Union said its members have been at the forefront on this issue.

The conference is Liverpool would be the world’s largest gathering on lung health in which clinicians, public health workers, policymakers, researchers and advocates working to end sufferings caused by lung diseases from over 125 countries will attend.

Conference organiser, the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, which is known as The Union, says the focus is specifically on the challenges faced by the low-and-middle-income countries. Of the 10 million people who die each year from lung diseases, some 80 percent live in these resource-strained countries.

The four-day annual conference at the ACC Liverpool is themed on “confronting resistance: fundamentals to innovations”.

“This theme addresses a number of critical areas for discussion – including the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance, which is one of the most important health, development and security challenges facing the world today,” The Union Executive Director Jose Luis Castro and Chair of the Coordinating Committee of Scientific Activities Stacie C Stender said in a joint message.

The conference theme also reflects the Union’s global tobacco control work, which requires “coordinated efforts to confront resistance from the tobacco industry and to introduce the innovative policies needed to de-normalise and reduce tobacco use,” they said.

“Together our research efforts proved critical in the World Health Organisation’s decision to recommend a new MDR-TB regimen that shortens the length of treatment from 24 months to nine months,” The Union executive director Castro said.

The inaugural keynote speaker Stephen Lewis, co-founder and director of AIDS-Free World, on Wednesday will address ‘confronting resistance’ from his international experience in combating global resistance to addressing HIV and antiretroviral drugs.

The Union will also host a high-level forum with ministers and their representatives from different countries during the conference.