World TB Day Observed: The Disease Is Not Incurable says ADL. Director Health

World TB Day

HYDERABAD, 24 March 2022: Provincial health department observed World TB Day by taking out an awareness rally from Gymkhana to the press club where Additional Director of Health Sindh Dr. Ali Akbar Daheri addressed a news conference at the press club.

During a news conference at the press club, Ali Akbar Daheri said that with reference to TB disease Pakistan was on No.5. He said if a person falls ill with TB there is a reason that 10 to 15 persons near him might get symptoms of the disease as such he asked people to visit any health facility near to patients’ home for treatment as TB is not an incurable disease.

Dr. Daheri said the time period of treatment for TB has been brought down from 2 years. He said so far more than one million patients have been cured in Sindh till 2021. He said that the Sindh government also pays transportation charges to family members accompanying the patient as financial help.

However, he said that due to a large number of this disease around 3 hundred thousand patients could not get treatment as out of this number around 46000 TB patients to die every year adding that the health department was working on more and more treatments to reduce the number of deaths.

He said that if anyone has any suspicion of this disease, he can immediately contact the nearest diagnostic and treatment center of the department and get his treatment free of cost. Tuberculosis is not an incurable disease but its timely diagnosis and proper treatment and precaution can save anyone’s life, Dahri said.

He said that at present 399 TB Diagnosis and timely Treatment Centers are functioning in Sindh where patients are not only diagnosed with TB but also screened for HIV. He said that during the year 2021, about 1069595 patients were treated free of cost by the department across Sindh. He said that earlier TB treatment was costly and it lasted for two years but now the treatment is being provided free of cost by the department in collaboration with Sindh government and global funding and it’s treatment duration was curtailed.

On this occasion, additional director TB control program Sindh Dr. Zahid Ali Shaikh, project manager Dr. Abid Ali Channa, district T B control association general secretary Rafiq Rajput and others also spoke.

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