On June 29, 2016, the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (Taiwan CDC) organized the APEC Conference on Prevention, Control and Care for Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB), and Supply of Second-Line Anti-Tuberculosis Drug and reiterated that Taiwan would continue to commit more resources to support the World Health Organization (WHO) post-2015 Global TB Strategy to end tuberculosis by 2035.　

After the “National Mobilization Plan to Halve TB in 10 Years” was implemented during 2005 and 2015, the annual TB incidence rate in Taiwan has lowered by about 6%. The number of MDR-TB cases decreased from 440 cases in 2007 to 184 cases in 2015. Nonetheless, approximately 11,000 confirmed cases are reported every year, resulting in about 600 deaths. Among all notifiable infectious disease, TB is the top leading cause of death. In the next five years, Taiwan CDC has planned to implement the Phase I Plan of our “End TB by 2035” program, setting aside budget for TB patients to seek medical treatment and providing MDR-TB patients with free medicine.

In 2007, we established the Taiwan MDR-TB Consortium (TMTC) medical care system, which manages MDR-TB patients and implemented the DOTS-plus program. The DOTS-plus program entails a trained health care worker or other designated individual (excluding a family member) providing the prescribed TB drugs to the patient and watching the patient swallow every dose twice a day for at least 5 days a week. As a result, our MDR-TB cure rate has reached 77%, which is above the world average. Last year, only 0.8% of the new TB cases have MDR-TB. Taiwan CDC Director-General Kuo Hsu-sung (郭旭崧) especially pointed out that the success of this program was attributed to the deceased Chief Secretary Ou Nai-ming (歐乃銘) and Chief Secretary Ou would be commended during the conference.　

　　
Since joining the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 1991, this is the first time Taiwan’s project proposal was ranked number 1 during the APEC Health Working Group (HWG) meeting, which is a result of Taiwan’s remarkable success in the prevention and control of TB. 27 participants from 14 countries, including the United States, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Switzerland, Chile, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and 103 domestic experts participated in this conference to discuss issues such as new treatment regimen for MDR-TB and rapid TB test.

Each year, about 10% of the MDR-TB cases reported in Taiwan are imported cases, posing a challenge to our TB prevention and control efforts. The treatment duration for MDR-TB is 2 years. Over the recent year, the treatment regimen has been shortened to 9 months, drastically decreasing the TB default rate. In line with the new administration’s “New Southward Policy”, Taiwan CDC is willing to share our experience in implementing the shortened TB regimen with other countries. We hope to increase the TB cure rate with a gradual promotion of the shortened TB regimen in the future.

The keynote speaker of this conference is Dr. Susan Maloney, who is the Global TB Director at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC) and visited Taiwan during the SARS outbreak to assist us with our SARS control efforts. In addition, Dr. Chan Pei-chun (詹珮君), a medical officer from Taiwan CDC, spoke about DR-TB patient management program in Taiwan. Dr. Jou Ru-wen (周如文), the Director of the Tuberculosis Research Center at Taiwan CDC, introduced the latest rapid TB test. Dr. Chiang Chen-yuan (江振源), who is a Consultant at the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease in Taiwan, shared the novel regimen options for DR-TB with the conference participants.