THE World Health Organisation yesterday unveiled a revised plan to combat TB, which kills about 2million people every year worldwide.

The Global Plan to Stop TB will focus more on scientific research and new technologies to improve testing methods, treatment drugs and finding a vaccine.

Its objectives are to ensure universal access to healthcare to all TB patients and to increase the global cure rate from 86percent to 90percent.

The plan, which stems from one outlined in 2006, was launched in Johannesburg.

"TB is an ancient illness. As a bacterial disease it is curable with antimicrobial drugs. It should belong to the past," said WHO Stop TB director Mario Raviglione.

Paul De Lay of UNAids said HIV infections had made TB "five times more severe than it should have been".

Gauteng health MEC Qedani Mahlangu said she was confident that the province would reach its target of an 85percent cure rate a year by 2011. The rate now stands at 82percent.

She said the province also wanted to lower the number of patients who defaulted on treatment. Though Mahlangu could not confirm the number, she said the default rate was "far less than 10percent".

She said there should be more stringent measures to ensure that patients did not default on treatment.

Mahlangu also defended the decision to close three TB hospitals in the province last month.

Patients at Charles Hurwitz TB Hospital in Soweto, Tshepong TB Hospital in Pretoria and East Rand TB Hospital in Ekurhuleni were moved to district hospitals because capacity of these facilities was below 50percent and were expensive to run, said Mahlangu.