Media honored in TB fight

SURAKARTA (JP): In observance of World Tuberculosis Day 2001, the Association of Indonesian Pulmonary Specialists (PDPI) awarded four national daily newspapers -- Kompas, Media Indonesia, The Jakarta Post, and Suara Pembaruan -- for their work in helping to raise awareness about the disease.

The awards were presented during a ceremony at the Sahid Raya Hotel here on Saturday by PDPI chairman Tjandra Yoga Aditama.

According to Aditama, the awards were given based on three criteria: the number of relevant articles published during 2000, the level of concern about tuberculosis, and the quality of the published articles.

The commemoration of this year's World TB Day was held in Surakarta with the theme "DOTS-TB Cure for All".

DOTS is a system being introduced globally by the World Health Organization as a key strategy for the eradication of TB.

Although the microbe causing the disease was discovered by Robert Koch more than a century ago -- on March 24, 1882 -- tuberculosis is still a major problem all over the world, including Indonesia.

According to Aditama, a person dies of tuberculosis every 10 seconds somewhere around the world while every second a new patient is infected with the disease.

"In Indonesia, every minute a new person gets tuberculosis and a person dies of the disease every four minutes," he said, adding that Indonesia was the country with the third highest level of pneumonia cases in the world after China and India.(swa)