About 500,000 Indonesians infected with TB annually
About 500,000 Indonesians infected with TB annually
JAKARTA (JP): Around 500,000 Indonesians are infected every
year with tuberculosis and an estimated 175,000 die because their
illness goes undetected, according to an official.
Hadi M. Abednego, director general for the prevention of
communicable diseases at the Ministry of Health, told a media
briefing here yesterday the government provides free medication
to 150,000 TB patients through Puskesmas (public health centers)
each year.
The media briefing was held to raise awareness of World
Tuberculosis Day, which falls on March 24.
Abednego was quoted by Antara as saying that 80 percent of TB
patients came from lower income families and the productive age
group of 15 to 54 years.
He said the high mortality from the disease was due to
ignorance of the possibility of medical treatment, the stigma
attached to the disease and the fact that many patients lived in
remote areas.
The government has equipped 25,000 Puskesmas across the
country with binocular microscopes as part of its drive to
eradicate the disease. A further 728 clinics have been trained to
handle TB patients in remote areas.
Abednego said tuberculosis was now second only to heart
disease as the most common cause of death in Indonesia. The
spread of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and the Acquired
Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), which TB often accompanies as
a secondary infection, could be a major cause of the increasing
number of deaths from the disease, he said in a seminar.
"With the appearance of HIV/AIDS across the globe,
(tuberculosis) has reemerged. AIDS victims lose their resistance
to TB," he said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said a number of
countries, including Indonesia, had failed to properly combat the
illness in a report published earlier this week.
The report said Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, the
Philippines, the Russian Federation, South Africa and Thailand
possess sufficient funds but are not doing enough to tackle the
disease. The WHO says that implementing the Directly Observed
Treatment, Short course (DOTS) program could bring the disease
under control.
A further eight countries named in the report - Afghanistan,
Ethiopia, India, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan and Uganda -
have very little money to spend on health. In some of these
countries the success rate for treating TB is falling.
A number of tuberculosis "hot-spots" exist in Indonesia,
including East Nusa Tenggara, Kalimantan, southern Sulawesi, Riau
and Aceh, Hadi said. In some of these areas, TB rates of
infection are as high as 12 per 10,000 inhabitants.
There are currently seven million cases of the lung disease
worldwide, the WHO report said. Sixty four percent of known
infections are in Asia.
Annual deaths from he disease are rising. Currently, about 3
million people die from the disease every year. The disease is
spread by coughing and sneezing. (swe)