World Tuberculosis Day and challenges for Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has huge Tuberculosis burden being fifth in the world. We could not reach the three million positive cases that are missing. Each positive case spreads the disease to around 10 persons. If not detected and treated, he or she may die in two years’ time. It is such a sad story that people are dying due to a disease that is 100 per cent treatable and curable.

Patient becomes non-infectious if he or she takes regular medicines for just two months and gets cured in just six months by following regular treatment. Its management and diagnostics are free. The most horrible aspect of the disease is that its resistance is now becoming common as Multi Drug Resistant TB is on the rise and Pakistan is at 4th number in the world.

Horrible is the fact that each Resistant TB case does not spread simple treatable TB to his or her contacts, but spreads the Resistant TB that is not curable by oral medicines.Epidemiologist Dr Muhammad Najeeb Durrani who is Member Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network (GOARN) expressed this while talking to ‘The News’ in connection with World TB Day which is commemorated March 24 to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of tuberculosis, and to step up efforts to end the global tuberculosis epidemic.

The date marks the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch announced he had discovered the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, which opened the way towards diagnosing and curing this disease.

Dr. Durrani said the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) target 3.3 also includes TB and calls for, by 2030, ending the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases. The theme of World TB Day 2022 is ‘Invest to End TB. Save Lives’.

He said Pakistan is also celebrating World TB day across the country highlighting success stories resulting from landmark achievements done by National TB Control Program over the years. The program has ensured provision of logistics support, medicines and quality diagnostics across the country in all provinces besides developing treatment centers for Multi Drug Resistant cases.

However, he added, as we go through the challenges, still we find very little work done so far on TB awareness among masses particularly about the disease being curable, its routes of transmission, type of tests required, bio-safety measures and infection control. Secondly, very little efforts have been done on discovering the disease among contacts around each positive case and there may be a huge burden of disease that continues to increase, he said. Thirdly, another milestone left unachievable is poor hospital linkages among various units/wards of the tertiary care hospitals.