Pakistan reports 500,000 TB cases annually: Health experts

News Desk

The health experts at the TB Day seminar in Peshawar reported 525,000 cases of TB annually in Pakistan and the working of 1,571 microscopy centers in the country.

The health experts said that TB remains the world’s deadliest infectious killer whilst observing that global efforts to combat TB have saved an estimated 54 million lives since the year 2000 by lowering the TB mortality rate by 42 percent.

To accelerate the TB response to reach the desired targets, at the first ever high-level meeting of the UN on this subject in September 2018, the Heads of States outlined a strong commitment to end the TB.

Speaking at the seminar, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Health Services, Regulations, and Coordination, Dr. Faisal Sultan said that free medical services are being provided by the National TB Control Program, with the support of Provincial TB Control Programs and partners through a network of more than 1700 TB care facilities across Pakistan.

Dr Faisal Sultan said that the government is committed to providing free of cost diagnostic and treatment services to more than 340,000 TB patients annually.

He said that there are more than 500 Gene X-pert machines for rapid testing of both drug-sensitive and drug-resistant TB patients across the country.

Dr Faisal said during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was no disruption of anti TB drugs for TB patients and the treatment success rate remained 94 percent during the pandemic.

He added that the government has paid special attention to this critical issue and strengthened the program for providing free treatment to TB patients.

Furthermore, the government is committed to achieving the target of eliminating the disease from the country and seeks the support of all stakeholders in this regard. In this respect, the government has planned several activities to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of this debilitating illness.

Accordingly, more than 300,000 TB patients are benefiting from free diagnostic and treatment facilities every year in Pakistan.

In line with the commitment to control and eradicate, more than 30 hospitals have been upgraded to take care of multi-drug resistant TB cases and 13 laboratories equipped with state-of-the-art facilities are being established in various parts of the country.

Historically, in 1882, Dr Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB. This opened the way for diagnosing and curing this disease.

The TB day reminds us of the commitments that the global leaders have made to control the disease.