KARACHI, Dec 12: Overall 17 per cent of the latest TB cases in Pakistan are among under five years of age and this further accounts for 30 per cent in Balochistan and Northern Areas.

This was stated by Dr Rashid A. Chotani of the Centre for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies, John Hopkins Department of Emergency Medicine and Director of Global Infectious Diseases Surveillance and Alert System, Baltimore, USA.

He was speaking at a seminar on “Humanitarian needs and the health sector crisis: A situation analysis of the emerging tuberculosis, other epidemics in the refugee impacted regions of Pakistan”, says a statement issued here on Wednesday by the Pakistan Society for Microbiology (PSM) which arranged the moot at Karachi University campus.

Dr Chotani said that in Pakistan the incidence of TB was much higher in females (60 per cent) than males.

The PSM statement said Dr Chotani and four other members of his team had recently visited the Afghan refugees camps in Peshawar to analyze the emerging crisis condition caused by the spread of infectious diseases and to develop recommendations for international and government organizations which would be requested to provide effective health services for Afghan refugees and other displaced persons.

Dr Chotani further stated that 15 to 20 million people worldwide had TB. Eight million new cases are added each year and two million deaths occur worldwide annually.

He said thousands of new Afghan refugees infected with TB and other infectious diseases might contribute to spread of epidemics if effective and timely control measures were not initiated with the help of international funding agencies.

Speaking on the occasion, PSM President Prof Dr Shahana Urooj Kazmi said that unregulated spread of infectious diseases was a serious economic burden as they continued to cause more deaths in Pakistan than natural disasters like earthquakes, floods etc.

She said infectious diseases such as Aids, malaria, respiratory disease and diarrhoea had killed much more people than those killed in recent years due to natural disasters.—APP