China, saddled with the world's second largest tuberculosis burden after India, is fighting an uphill battle against drug-resistant forms of the disease.

Drug-resistant TB, far more expensive to treat, emerges when patients fail to follow treatment regimens and take substandard drugs or stop treatment too early.

China has 4.5 million TB cases currently; and each year 1.4 million people fall ill with the disease.

TB killed 160,000 people in China in 2008, according to the World Health Organization.

TB is also a big drain on China's health budget. Regular TB costs 1,000 yuan to treat in China but drug-resistant TB ranges from 100,000 to 300,000 yuan per person, said Zhong Qiu of China's TB Expert Consultative Committee.

"Some are so afraid of stigma they don't see a doctor, they just buy drugs over the counter."

TB affects mostly poor people, who typically live in places where healthcare is not easily accessible.

WHO recommends all TB treatment be free because the disease is a public health threat.

But in China, diagnosis and treatment is only free in specialist TB outpatient clinics. General hospitals, which have been self-financing since the 1990s, impose charges.

The world's only TB vaccine is 100 years old and there has been no new TB drug for more than 40 years.

Chinese scientists are working on a new class of TB drugs based on an old one called clofazimine, used in the past to treat leprosy, said Ann Ginsberg, chief medical officer of the TB Alliance, a US-based non-profit scientific group that pulls together partners to develop new TB drugs.

Source: South China Morning Post, January 7

For the Chinese version, see P6 in today's Global Times Chinese edition