One of the fastest emerging risk factors for TB is diabetes. Diabetes triples an individual’s risk of developing TB and makes TB diagnosis and treatment more difficult.
Nearly 400 million people suffer from diabetes worldwide, this is expected to rise to nearly 592 million people by 2035 – a rapidly increasing number of whom live in developing countries where TB is more common. It is likely that diabetes will soon surpass HIV as the most important risk factor for TB.
In an article on Global Health Now, experts from the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases and the ESI-Post Graduate Institute of Medical Science and Research in Bangalore, discuss how the world should respond to the looming TB-Diabetes dual epidemic – including what lessons can be taken from the slow response to the TB-HIV epidemic.
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