A 2006 colorized scanning electron micrograph of tuberculosis bacteria. (Janice Carr/CDC/Handout/Reuters)

GENEVA (Reuters) -
A new diagnostic test unveiled by the
World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday will allow doctors in
poor countries to find out within hours — instead of months —
whether patients have drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO's Stop TB department,
said the molecular test developed by Hain Lifescience and
Innogenetics represented a big breakthrough in the fight
against tuberculosis, a contagious respiratory ailment that
kills 1.5 million people a year.

“We are capable now of making a diagnosis of MDR-TB within
hours,” he said, using the acronym for multi-drug resistant
tuberculosis, an infection that cannot be cured with a standard
course of antibiotics.

The new test can determine directly from a patient's saliva
whether the tuberculosis bacteria can be treated with the two
main antibiotics, isoniazid and rifampicin, making it easier to
prescribe the drug to cure the disease and prevent its spread.

Previous tests required saliva samples to be incubated for
as many as 60 days in order for microbacteria to grow and be
tested against different antibiotic compounds.

Drug-resistant tuberculosis strains are particularly lethal
for HIV/AIDS sufferers and those with weak immune systems.
Errors in prescribing antibiotics can worsen drug resistance
problems and lead to XDR-TB, an untreatable form that has
emerged in 49 countries including the United States, France,
Russia, South Africa, Brazil and Australia.

The Germany-based Hain Lifescience is also working on a
test to diagnose XDR, which remains in an experimental stage, a
WHO spokesman said.

Lesotho will be the first country to get the lab equipment
and training to use the new diagnostics under a program
supported by the WHO's partners UNITAID and the Foundation for
Innovative New Diagnostics, Raviglione told a news briefing.

The other countries due to receive support to use the new
test in the next four years are: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cote
d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Georgia,
Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Moldova, Myanmar,
Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

The WHO said this deployment, as well as efforts to make
second-line antibiotics more affordable, should increase to 15
percent the proportion of patients with multi-drug resistant
tuberculosis who are diagnosed and treated appropriately.

At present, that rate is only 2 percent.

(Editing by Ibon Villelabeitia)