Awareness programmes mark World Tuberculosis Day in Delhi

March 24th, 2011 - 8:44 pm ICT by ANI  

New Delhi, Mar. 24 (ANI): Indian capital New Delhi marked World Tuberculosis (TB) Day with various awareness programmes on Thursday.

Delhi’s Finance and Power Minister A K Walia, who was the chief guest at a function, said the government and civic bodies were implementing a co-ordinated plan to fight the menace.

“Delhi Government, Municipal Corporation Department (MCD), Indian Government, NDMC (New Delhi Municipal Council), all of us are fighting for eradication of Tuberculosis. We have opened DOT (Directly Observed Treatment) centres, test clinics, microscopy centres. The patients are provided medicines in these DOT centres. They have to go there on alternative days and they are given medicines. If the patients don’t go then a message is sent to their homes so that they can take medicines regularly. In this revised treatment, within six to eight months tuberculosis can be control,” said Walia.

“We have somewhere about 587 DOT (Directly Observed Treatment) centres, 195 microscopy centres and 24 chest clinics. The patients are provided medicines in these centres,” he added.

By 2015 more than two million people will contract a form of TB resistant to standard drugs and the fight against it must be stepped up, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

In a report launched on World TB Day, the United Nations health body along with a global fund that directs money to the disease, called on world leaders to pay more towards a goal of diagnosing and treating a million people with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) between 2011 and 2015.

Tuberculosis spreads through the air. If it is not effectively treated, each person with active TB can infect on average 10 to 15 people a year.

A separate reported by the WHO’s European office and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) last week found that TB kills an estimated 1.7 million people each year and the worldwide number of new cases - around 9.4 million - is higher than at any other time in history. (ANI)

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