GENEVA, Oct 24 (AFP) - The World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank warned Wednesday that the millions of refugees fleeing US-led strikes on Afghanistan were at risk from tuberculosis (TB).
Cramped in Pakistani refugee camps or in displacement camps within Afghanistan, the refugees become much more susceptible to the highly contagious airborne disease, which kills some two million people per year.
The WHO and World Bank on Wednesday launched a "Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis," an initiative which aims to combat the deadly disease by making inexpensive drugs available to affected populations while providing special care to patients suffering from AIDS, who are more susceptible to drug-resistant forms of TB.
The plan aims to provide long-term care to people infected with TB, while keeping the cost at just 10 dollars (11 euros) per person, the WHO and World Bank said in a statement, adding that treatment has a 90 percent success rate.
They also said that of 9.3 billion dollars (10.4 billion euros) called for in 1998 by an international anti-TB alliance, only 4.5 billion dollars (five billion euros) had so far been raised.
"The World Bank sees the Global Plan to Stop TB as a road map for a world free of TB," World Bank President James Wolfensohn said Tuesday at a forum to launch the iniative.
"For our part, we will reinforce our role as a principal external financier of TB control programs and health systems worldwide," he said.
The WHO and World Bank said their Global Plan to Stop TB aims to detect 70 percent of TB cases by 2005, while treating 85 percent of new cases by the same date.
They noted that 80 percent of the world's TB cases were concentrated in 22 developing countries.
bfr/me/ds AFP
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