PESHAWAR, Feb 27: There are about 250,000 tuberculosis (TB) patients in the country out of whom 40,000 are in NWFP. The situation calls for raising the level of awareness among the people and this task can best be done by the media.
This was the crux of speeches made by specialists at a one-day media workshop here on Sunday. "Every year some eight million people are infected with TB worldwide and two million of them succumb to the disease", said Dr Abdul Ghafoor, the manager NWFP TB control programme.
He said that the NWFP had got 150 health facilities where free diagnosis and treatment was offered to the people under directly observed treatment short course (Dots).
He said despite the fact that trained doctors and paramedics had been giving free treatment to TB patients; the NWFP recorded 8,000 patients in 2002, 13,500 patients in 2003 and 18,000 patients in 2004.
He said the only way to control the disease was to raise level of awareness among the people so that they could contact health facilities in case TB symptoms were noticed in a person.
He said that the NWFP had achieved a target of 100 per cent treatment coverage of TB under Dots in January 2005. The cure rate here was 86 per cent while 85 per cent was international standard fixed by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Dr Ghafoor said TB is a poor-specific disease that ultimately leads to death of the patient if he or she does not take interest in treatment. "Nevertheless, the disease today is 100 per cent curable", he added. He said that the Federal Republic of Germany, GTZ, WHO and other donor agencies were also supporting the TB control programme in Pakistan.
TB, he said, is a highly dangerous infectious disease that is why the WHO had declared global emergency against TB in 1983 with a view to checking its spread, he added. Pakistan, he said ranked sixth among the countries with TB patients and it had to make all out efforts to get rid of it.
Dr Maqsood Ahmad of the WHO said that a TB patient starts feeling marked improvement within one or two months of treatment but they should continued treatment for eight consecutive months.
"Some of the patients do not complete treatment due to which they develop multi-drug resistant TB which is extremely dangerous", he said and added that the government had purchased Rs2 million drugs this year to provide treatment to those suffering from multi-drug resistant TB.
He said treatment of TB was easy but TB patients faced extreme social stigma due to which they avoided to be known as TB patients by their near and dear ones. Mr Khan said that it was responsibility of the media, religious scholars and community elders to try their level best to remove the stigma associated with the disease.
Dr Khawaja Laiq Ahmad of the WHO was of the view that people having persistent cough for three weeks, low grade fever, night sweating, loss of weight and appetite and blood in sputum should contact TB specialists for checking. He said that sputum microscopy was the best diagnosis, which was being done free of cost in public sector health facilities.