Likewise other parts of the world, the World Tuberculosis Day also observed here on Wednesday with renewed pledge to combat TB from the province. The World TB Day is observed on March 24 each year to commemorate the date in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch announced the discovery of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB).
World-wide, the TB remains one of the leading causes of death from infectious disease. An estimated 2 billion persons, which equal to one third of the world's population are infected with Tuberculosis. The World TB Day provides an opportunity for TB programmes from the platforms of the non-governmental organisations and other partners to describe problems and solutions related to the TB pandemic and to support world-wide TB-control activities.
The theme for this year's observance is "TB Elimination: Now is the Time!" The theme for World TB Day 2010 has been selected as "Sing the song to eradicate TB", the Director Provincial Anti-Tuberculosis Programme Dr Asmat Ara informed while talking to this scribe on Wednesday.
She said that Tuberculosis claiming the lives of 30 million every year in the world while in Pakistan around 62 thousand people lose their breathing in a year as a result of tuberculosis and TB is an epidemic disease, which was declared the world disaster by United Nation in the year 1993 because of its rapid spread in many countries of the world."
She said the causes for the continued rise in the TB case, including poor health infrastructure, poverty, increasing population and lake of commitment of the government. Dr Asmat said that the government is committed to providing free diagnostic and treatment facilities to those suffering from tuberculosis and the government of Pakistan had improved TB detection system due to which TB cases were being properly treated.
She said that the Government of Pakistan was successfully implementing its Dots program under which free diagnostic and treatment services were being provided in all four provinces of the country including Fata, AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan. She informed that the anti TB hospitals and clinics of the Sindh are offering free treatment to patients and by taking advantage of such humanitarian services, the patients could save their lives.
She said the scourge of TB never eradicated but eliminated because human beings were its host and the tuberculosis virus could be transmitted through breading and coughing.
Dr Asmat elaborated that the TB is not only a poor people's disease, but also infect rich people and there is the need to educate rich people to contribute to the treatment of poor TB patients so that the disease could not be break out. She said that only way to control the disease is to raise level of awareness among the people so that one could contact health centres to avail facilities in case of TB symptoms were noticed.
She said that TB patient starts feeling of improvement within one or two months of treatment but they should continue treatment for eight consecutive months and some of the patients do not complete treatment due to which they develop multi-drug resistant TB, which is extremely dangerous, she added. She informed that the treatment of TB is easy but TB patients suffer extreme social stigma due to which they feel shy of calling themselves as TB patients by their near and dear ones.
She said that TB Patients having persistent cough for three weeks, low grade fever, night sweating, loss of weight and appetite and blood in sputum should contact TB specialists for checking and sputum microscopy is the best diagnosis, which is being done free of cost in public sector health facilities, she added.
Dr Asmat said that any person with a cough for more than three weeks, fever, weight loss should be screening for TB but the children can easily contract the disease and such it was available that patients pay special attention to little children in case their coughing continued for two months and physicians should not referral of the children suspected of TB to major treatment centres so that further complications could be avoided, she said.
She said that unfortunately despite all efforts still remained the major cause of the mortality in the Pakistan and were spreading and TB posed a serious and ever increasing problem in the Pakistan affecting health and social welfare. She said that it is a major responsibility of the media, religious scholars and community elders to make their level best to remove such stigma associated with the disease.
She emphasised the need for adopting effective measures for eradicating tuberculosis from the country. Dr Asmat said that the Tuberculosis is the only disease against which the government has taken initiatives on war footing-basis and succeeded in controlling it by and large.
She opined that as a result of the efforts, Pakistan has gone down from number six position to number eight among those countries of the world, which has maximum numbers of tuberculosis patients and India and China are still at number one and number two positions in the ranking, she said.
She said that tuberculosis is curable disease and there is the need of mass awareness against the disease so that it could be eradicated from the country through community participation. She also called upon the print and electronic media to extend co-operation and make awareness among the people for taking preventive measures against tuberculosis.
Comments
Comments are closed.