Looming Epidemic Keeps Country on High Alert

Tuberculosis represents a serious public health issue that has hindered the social and economic development in China, said Vice-Minister of Health Yin Dakui.

Yin made the remarks at a symposium in Beijing yesterday to mark the first international TB Prevention Day in the new millennium.

According to Yin, China is second in the world in the number of TB patients, next only to India. It has 70 per cent of the TB patients in the Western Pacific Region.

China has 6 million TB patients, among whom 2 million are contagious.

Each year more than 250,000 people die from the disease, which causes two-thirds of infectious disease deaths in the country.

Yin noted that inappropriate treatment and poverty have turned 41 per cent of those with the illness into drug-resistant TB patients. They go on to infect another 28 per cent who will also become drug-resistant.

Statistics indicate that the incidence of TB in the countryside is 2.4 times that of cities.

"Hardly any other disease can cause direct damage to families and hinder social and economic developments more than TB," said Yin. "It has incurred a great loss to the country as 75 per cent of TB patients are at the working ages between 15 and 54 years old."

Yin added that the risk is increased by interrelated factors like HIV-AIDS co-infections and the rise in the number of the migrants.

According to Yin, Directly Observed Treatment Short-Course (DOTS) is the most effective and cost-effective TB control treatment in the world today. The country introduced two major projects in the 1990s to combat the TB epidemic by implementing a DOTS strategy.

A World Bank assisted project was started in 1992. The US$58 million project involved 1,164 counties, and 13 provinces and cities, covering 560 million people.

By the end of 1999, 1.5 million contagious TB patients had been treated and 90 per cent of them were cured.

Starting in 1993, the Ministry of Health allocated 3 million yuan(US$360,000) to utilize the DOTS strategy in 15 provinces. To date 100,000 infectious TB patients have been treated.

Yin said that the Chinese Government has always taken the epidemic seriously and has placed prevention as its main policy.

As a regular prevention, inoculation against TB is given to infants weeks after birth, and reinforced among children in kindergartens and schools.

He disclosed that a nationwide survey on TB will be carried out this year to offer information for future TB prevention plans.

In addition to that, the State will work out long-and medium-term programmes to govern the work on TB control from the year 2001 to 2010.

The ministry's goal is to have the DOTS strategy reach 90 per cent of the population by 2005.

(China Daily)

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