PESHAWAR March 23: The NWFP chapter of the Pakistan Chest Society has demanded that the government should impose an outright ban on open sale of tuberculoses (TB) medicines.

Speaking at a press conference here on Friday, Dr Mukhtiar Zaman Afridi of the society said that a major cause of multi-drug resistance (MDR) tuberculoses was an easy availability of TB drugs in the market.

He said that the patients usually used drugs without prescribed guidelines under directly-observed treatment shortcourse (DOTS) which ultimately caused multi-drug resistance TB among them.

Dr Afridi said if the easy availability of TB medicines continued then controlling the disease would be a difficult task for the government as its treatment was costly and ordinary people could hardly afford it.

“The government should ensure availability of costly medicine so the specialist doctors would treat multi-drug resistance TB patients under their observation,” he said.

Dr Afridi said the chest society was closely working with the provincial TB control programme and playing an active role in ‘Stop TB Partnership’ of the department.

He said the world was observing TB Day on March 24, with the aim to expedite fight against the disease and create awareness among the people.

“A TB patient can transfer the disease to 15 people per year and it usually spread through coughing out phlegm,” he said.

He said the control of TB was a big challenge and this could be controlled through community awareness.

“On the March 24th on the eve of World TB Day, we will organise programmes at various hospitals across the province and arrange lectures for doctors for their capacity building,” he said and added that “a seminar would also be held today (Saturday) at the Auqaf Hall in Peshawar”.—PPI