Five countries in the Region are among the thirty high burden countries for TB with different risks (108). Drug resistance in relation to TB is a growing challenge in the Region. Gender, socioeconomic status and other social determinants of health can create barriers to availability, accessibility and acceptability of treatment.
Five countries in the Region are among the thirty high burden countries for TB with different risks (108). Drug resistance in relation to TB is a growing challenge in the Region. Nearly 90,000 cases of multidrug-resistant TB estimated to have occurred in the Region in 2017, yet only 30% of them were diagnosed (5). Figure 8 shows new cases for MDR-TB in the Region (2017) illustrating higher rates of new cases for males with the important exception of Papua New Guinea (109). Tuberculosis is widely recognized as a disease of poverty, and socio-economic hardship may be exacerbated or compounded by infection of MDR-TB due to barriers linked to actual availability, accessibility and acceptability of treatment such as longer time required for treatment and loss of earnings (see Section 5.1). Even in cases where MDR-TB services are provided as part of UHC schemes, such packages or services may still suffer from inequities between men and women, or poor and non-poor (110).
Figure 8: Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis without extensive drug resistance, new cases per 100,000, males and females, all ages, selected countries, Western Pacific, 2017 (109)
References
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