Dr Zafar Ali Syed President of Pakistan Chest Society has said that tuberculosis becomes grave concern for the people of Pakistan and health professionals as well, while 22,000 people die of TB yearly in the country.
In an interview on the issue of 'Asthma Awareness' on Friday he said that as many as 1.1 million people are infected with asthma and tuberculosis considering still as incurable and avoidable especially in the rural areas of the country, while about 290,000 people are suffering with the disease.
While, about 3 billion people are reportedly infected with tuberculosis in the world, out of which nearly 0.2 million people passes away. Explaining the statistics, Dr Zafar Ali Syed said about 85 percent out of total number of patients live in the developing world, while 44 percent patients belong to Pakistan which is listed on seven number among 22 countries that have large number of TB patients. Out of 100,000 TB patients in the world nearly 49 patients die of TB.
Renowned TB expert Dr Zafar Ali Syed said that TB was infectious and systematic disease caused by a germ called Mycobacterium Tuberculosis that usually attack on the human lungs and infect other people by coughing, spitting of TB infected people.
"The germ of the TB was first discovered in March 24, 1884 by a scientist named Robert Kochs. There are two types of the disease as Pulmonary Tuberculosis that is fatal and starts from infecting lungs, about 80 percent people got infected with this type of TB. Other one is Extra-Pulmonary Tuberculosis, which is also called as TB of external lungs, which is not declared as fatal as Pulmonary Tuberculosis. There are seven symptoms of the disease, including three weeks old cough, evening fever, loosing weight, exhaustion.
Giving the details about National TB Control Programme and Provincial TB Control Programme, he said that this programme was the collateral programme, which was trying to get rid of the disease from the country. The responsibility of the programme was to make polices and strategy at national level but Provincial TB Control Programme implemented the policies in the districts, he added.
"The government, keeping in view of the fatality of the disease, declared TB as national emergency in March 24, 2001, while it has already been declared in the world as global emergency in 1993. For the cure of TB patients, WHO introduced Directly Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS), a type of cure, which has 95 percent successful rate even in the poorest countries of the world. About 67 percent cases of TB have been detected in the country, while 35 percent cases of TB are reported in Punjab only. Approximately, 55,000 people are being medically treated in the province, however 64,000 cases are registered who can infect other people," he said. He said that the reason of worsening the situation was that the physicians were unaware about right treatment of TB patients, only one physician out of seven could prescribe properly.
He added that now the situation was satisfactory, pertaining to prescribing and providing medical treatment appropriately to TB infected people. Dr Zafar Ali Syed said that improper attitude of the medical workers, lack of political commitment, lack of medicines and unawareness about the disease were main cause that stayed away the patients from cure programme in early 2005.
He said that it was unnecessary to socially boycott TB infected people because it could not be declared as social stigma. He added that the media was the only hope in dissemination of positive massages convincing the people that the cure is better than prevention in context of TB treatment. He said cure of TB known as DOTS took 240 days to completely terminate the disease, without which the disease could cause fatality of the patient.