August 1, 2008 Tuberculosis (TB) kills two million people and
infects nine million every year, and those numbers are rising,
especially in southern Africa, which has the highest rates of
HIV. TB-HIV co-infection is already a major problem and it is
only getting worse, in part because of a lack of effective
diagnostic tools and treatments. Dr. Peter Saranchuk was the
medical coordinator at MSF’s HIV/AIDS project in Lesotho. Here,
he explains the reasons behind the dangerous relationship
between TB and HIV. Why are so many people affected by HIV also
affected by TB? HIV slowly makes a person’s immune system weak
over time, so they suffer from more infections, and these
infections get more and more serious as time goes on. If a
person is exposed to someone with TB in their household,
everyone in that household is exposed. Normally, TB stays
dormant inside the body, but if that person gets sick, and their
immune system gets weak, then the TB germ starts to grow and
cause active disease. So if it’s TB of the lungs