KOHAT, June 21: At least 200 people are hit by tuberculosis in the district every year despite the new TB control programme. Patients told this correspondent that doctors in various TB control centres in the district actively discouraged them from seeking free treatment, telling them that medicines provided at government-run centres were ineffective. According to government estimates, the disease killed at least 9,000 people in the NWFP each year.

In 2004, the number of TB patients in the district was 360 which shot up to 625 in 2005.

According to official statistics, at least 292 people had registered during the first two quarters of 2007 at the KDA Medical Complex alone.

Health experts feared that the situation in the other nine government-run centres “must be alarming”, with rural population’s health at high risk.

According to reports from Orakzai Agency and Hangu, anti-TB drugs were being sold in markets at extremely high rates.

Dr Irshad Noor, in-charge of the Direct Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS) programme in Kohat, says the biggest challenge for the TB control programme is the social stigma attached to the disease.

He claims that the number of male patients coming to 10 cure centres is negligible and the number of girls seeking medical treatment is even less.

He said the incidence of TB among women was 60 per cent which clearly indicated that their families were not taking proper care of them.

According to him, another problem being faced by doctors was discontinuity of treatment.

If a patient stopped taking treatment at any stage, he had to start afresh, but the government did not provide him free medicines then and he was told to bear the entire cost of treatment which was next to impossible, Dr Noor said.

In case of any break in treatment, a patient had to undergo a 24-month treatment instead of the normal eight- month course, with the cost soaring to about Rs200,000 but without any government relief.

Doctors stressed the need for a door-to-door awareness campaign against the disease and said every TB patient affected at least 10 to 15 other healthy people.