Many of the talks at the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. today are focused on the epidemic worldwide, including problems with HIV and tuberculosis (TB), the number one killer of people with HIV around the globe.

In this video, UCSF assistant professor Gabriel Chamie discusses why TB is such a problem, how HIV makes TB worse, how HIV complicates TB diagnoses, and how it contributes to the spread of TB. These are several of the reasons why modern approaches to the global HIV epidemic seek to address both diseases at the same time.

“We have some obstacles that we have to beth through before we can address this epidemic fully,” said Chamie. “We’re making great strides, but there’s a lot of work to be done.”

Chamie spoke today about a study from the “Sustainable East Africa Research in Community Health (SEARCH) Collaboration,” which is led by doctors at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) and Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

Testing and treating both HIV and TB was one of the subjects of the talk, which focused on a clinical study in a remote region of southwest Uganda that demonstrated the feasibility of using a health campaign to rapidly test a community for HIV and simultaneously offer prevention and diagnosis for a variety of other diseases in rural and resource-poor settings of sub-Saharan Africa.

Addressing TB is one of the issues identified in the official declaration of the conference, which states, “No more living with HIV but dying of TB.” Read about it in the Washington D.C. Declaration.

Gabriel Chamie, MD, MPH, is an assistant professor in the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH)