AIDS and TB team up to kill even more

More people are getting tuberculosis because of AIDS and more die of AIDS because of TB, yet doctors fail to recognize the respiratory disease in AIDS patients and governments do little about it, according to a report released on Tuesday. Sexier topics like avian flu get immediate attention while 2 million people die every year of tuberculosis, and 9 million become infected, according to the report from the Open Society Institute, a foundation set up by financier George Soros. Together, TB and AIDS are causing a "double plague," Stephen Lewis, the United Nations Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa told reporters in a telephone briefing. "Governments and the international community have got to realize they have on their hands two simultaneous and interrelated catastrophes," Lewis said.