TB vaccine may worsen children's HIV

South African experts have warned that a vaccine aimed at protecting children in developing countries from tuberculosis (TB) could be harming or even killing infants infected with HIV.

They said that the Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, derived from a bovine strain of TB, appeared to be causing serious infections in babies and young children with the HIV disease.

Dr. Mark Cotton, a pediatrician and HIV researcher at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, conducted a study which indicated a 75 per cent mortality rate in children that developed the BCG disease, and that 70 per cent of these children were HIF-infected.

His research was part of a wider report issued last week about the health emergency that is being caused around the world by HIV and TB.

Veronica Miller, director of The Forum for Collaborative HIV Research, said: "Now the eye of the storm is in sub-Saharan Africa, where half of new TB cases are HIV co-infected and where drug-resistant TB is silently spreading.

"Unlike bird flu, the global threat of HIV/TB is not hypothetical. It is her now. But the science and coordination needed to stop it are utterly insufficient."

The HIV virus has infected an estimated 40 million people around the world, and those left untreated lose their ability to fight off infections such as TB, which is estimated to infect one third of the world's population, one tenth of whom will develop an active strain of the disease.

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