Beijing - Countries facing the heaviest toll of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are not moving fast enough to provide life-saving treatment, according to international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). As ministers from high-burden countries gather tomorrow in Beijing for a WHO conference, MSF calls on them to commit to treating more people with MDR-TB, and to conducting necessary research to improve current treatment options. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that there are around 500,000 new MDR-TB cases each year, but that under 30,000 people were detected and notified last year. Only 3,681 are known to have started treatment according to international guidelines and with quality-assured medicines.

"The slow progress in treating people with MDR-TB is particularly striking because high-burden MDR-TB countries are definitely not the least developed in the world," said Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer, Director of MSF's Access to Essential Medicines Campaign. "They have the capacity to act, and need to make this a priority and put people on treatment."

MSF is concerned that many countries, particularly those that are classified by WHO as "high-burden", like China, South Africa or India, are not doing enough to provide treatment to patients in need. In addition, not providing appropriate treatment further contributes to the spread of drug-resistant TB. China, for example, has a quarter of the world's MDR-TB cases. Answering to an initial request made by the Chinese National TB Programme, MSF then failed to obtain the authorisation to provide care for MDR-TB patients in Inner-Mongolia, despite two years of negotiations with national, provincial and regional authorities. MSF has now abandoned its attempts to open the project.

"Not being able to act when there are people that need life-saving treatment is extremely frustrating," said Meinie Nicolai, MSF Director of Operations. "Because we did not manage to reach an agreement, we could not put a single patient on treatment. And because they can't get treated anywhere else, many people will have died while we were stalled in meetings these past two years."

Investing in research is also necessary. Treating MDR-TB is complex, lengthy, and involves the use of drugs that can cause severe side effects and are not optimally effective. Therefore, there is an urgent need to speed up the development of newer, better tests and drugs, and to conduct studies to optimise MDR-TB treatment.

"Crucially, high-burden countries have the skills and some of the resources needed to conduct the research to improve MDR-TB treatment," said Dr. von Schoen-Angerer. "The Beijing meeting is an opportunity for high-burden countries to take the lead in addressing this crisis, by setting targets to put more patients on treatment, by agreeing to import quality-assured drugs, and by establishing a joint research effort to improve existing treatment."

In 2007, MSF treated 574 patients for MDR-TB in 12 projects including in South Africa, India, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Armenia.