PESHAWAR, March 22: Doctors have stressed the need for awareness among the people regarding the preventive measures to save people from the deadly disease of tuberculosis.

Speaking at a news conference here on Saturday, Begum Zari Sarfraz, NWFP president of the TB Association, said that the deadly disease killed two million people annually, with 80 per cent of the victims coming from 22 poor countries of the world.

Pakistan, she said, ranked sixth among the TB-affected countries.

Flanked by deputy managers of the provincial TB Programme, Dr Khwaja Laiq Ahmad and Dr Taj Muhammad, she said that one person was affected by the disease after every second. She urged the need for enhancing the potential of the health professionals and involving the community in the awareness about the disease. Allocation of more funds also demanded to increase the pace of detection of TB cases in the country.

Under the directly observed treatment short (Dots) course, Dr Khwaja Laiq and Dr Taj Mohammad said that 9,000 patients had been treated in the NWFP, out of the totally cured 16,000. The Dots facilities had been provided to the people of 11 districts in the province, which would be enhanced to all the 24 districts of the province by the year 2005.

They told newsmen that the patients of the disease were completely curable under Dots, a procedure in which the patients were administered anti-TB drugs under direct supervision of the doctors. The main reason for the rise in the TB cases, they said, was reluctance on the part of the patients to continue treatment for eight months, which developed resistance against the drugs.

The doctors said that according to the WHO’s estimate only 30 per cent of the TB cases were being diagnosed and treated under Dots programme, whereas the standard was to diagnose 70 per cent cases under the programme. Likewise, they said, WHO’s guidelines also called for provision of diagnostic facility to 70 per cent and cure rate of 85 per cent patients by 2010.

The doctors also feared that some 35 million people were destined to die of TB by the year 2020, if the government failed to strengthen the TB control programme. —Correspondent