The World Health Organization unveiled on Monday a new diagnostic test that will give doctors the possibility to discover multi drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) within hours instead of months.

The current method involves taking saliva samples, which have to be incubated for as many as 60 days in order for microbacteria to grow and be tested against different antibiotic compounds. Therefore, it takes up to three months to discover MDR-TB. This is the main reason why only 2 percent of MDR-TB cases worldwide are diagnosed and treated appropriately.

With the new molecular test, developed by Hain Lifescience and Innogenetics, doctors will figure out from a simple patient’s saliva sample whether tuberculosis bacteria can be treated with isoniazid and rifampicin, the two main antibiotics used in treating the disease. This will make it easier to treat and prevent the spread of tuberculosis, a contagious respiratory ailment that kills an estimated 1.5 million people a year, director of the WHO's Stop TB department, Dr. Mario Raviglione said, according to Reuters.

The infection is particularly dangerous for people suffering from HIV/AIDS or for those whose immune system is weakened. That’s why errors in prescribing antibiotics could turn fatal, as MDR-TB could turn in XDR-TB, an untreatable form of tuberculosis, already found in Australia, Brazil, Russia, France, South Africa, and the United States.

TB affects the lungs and can be transmitted by an infected person in droplets through coughing, sneezing, singing and other activities. The disease infected 9.2 million people in 2006, turning it into the world’s second-most-fatal infectious disease after AIDS, the WHO said.

The WHO also announced the test will be available over the next four years in more than a dozen countries, under a program supported by the WHO’s partners UNITAID and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics. The $26.1 million initiative will be available in Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Myanmar, Moldova, Lesotho, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Georgia, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Bangladesh, and Azerbaijan.