Ha Noi (VNA) - The National Tuberculosis Control Programme will carry out their first ever survey to evaluate the impact of Tuberculosis (TB) in Viet Nam in 2006, said Nguyen Duc Duong, Vice Director of National Institute of TB and Lung Disease.
Duong was speaking at a conference, held on April 28 in Ha Noi, to review the TB prevention programme in 2005 and preview implementation activities for 2006.
"Buying drugs for TB treatment is the most effective way to control the problem. So, in 2006, the programme will prioritise its state budget funding towards purchasing drugs to treat TB," Duong said.
According to statistics, the programme discovered and provided treatment for nearly 97,000 TB patients in 2005, 3.8 percent less in comparison with the previous year. More than 90 percent of TB patients recovered after treatment.
The control programme still faced challenges fighting TB in remote areas, particularly with the spread of HIV/AIDS and TB's increasing resistance to medicine, Duong said.
Viet Nam now has about 221,000 TB patients, ranking it as the 13th country in a list of the countries with the most incidence of TB. About 145,000 new TB cases are reported each year with 70 percent of TB patients are between the age of 15 and 55.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), everyday TB kills 1,000 people in the Western Pacific alone. Some 5.500 people develop TB daily, the majority of them poor. WHO aims to halve the incidence of TB in the region by 2010.-Enditem
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