The United Nations hosted on Monday the first-ever HIV/TB Global Leaders' Forum at its New York headquarters with an aim to tackle the tuberculosis (TB) threat.

The forum, held on the eve of a high-level meeting on AIDS, brought together participants such as Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), to discuss the impact of the TB and HIV epidemics.

"Today, tuberculosis is one of the top 10 leading causes of death globally, causing more than 4,000 deaths every day," UN chief Ban Ki-moon told the meeting.

"This is shocking: no one should die of TB, a preventable and curable disease, in this prosperous and technology-rich 21st century," he said.

TB accounts for an estimated quarter of a million deaths each year among those living with HIV and is the number one cause of death among people living with HIV in Africa.

Recently, WHO, UNAIDS and the UN Children's Fund announced that some 3 million people are now receiving life-saving anti-retroviral treatment. However, TB, especially drug-resistant forms of the disease, threatens to hinder this progress.

HIV and TB, according to UNAIDS, are so closely connected that they are often referred to as co-epidemics or dual epidemics that drive and reinforce one another.

Since HIV weakens the immune system, people living with the virus are up to 50 times more likely to develop TB than those who are HIV negative. Without proper treatment with anti-TB drugs, the majority of people living with HIV die within two to three months of becoming sick with TB.

"Despite the fact that HIV and TB frequently occur in the same one person, we continue to deal with the two diseases separately," Ban said.

"Fewer than one third of all people living with HIV and TB worldwide received appropriate treatment for both diseases in 2007,he said, "We are therefore missing crucial opportunities to provide comprehensive and more effective services."

The secretary-general called for "more collaboration between sectors, better coordination between actors, greater investment in TB research and control, and strengthened health systems" to address the problem.

(Xinhua News Agency June 10, 2008)