Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore   

TPs, ZPs asked to help with TB control programme

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE March 24. The Minister for Medical Education, A.B. Maalakaraddy, has urged taluk and zilla panchayats to help in the State's tuberculosis (TB) control programme. He said this at a function to commemorate `World TB Day' at the SDS TB and Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases here today.

He said that under the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP) which began in 1997 and its directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS), the success rate was over 80 per cent. It used to be 30 per cent earlier as patients discontinued treatment because of poverty or ignorance. Door-to-door campaigns had helped make people more aware, he said.

The TB control campaign had covered Bangalore Rural, Mandya, Bagalkot, Bijapur, Koppal, Raichur, Bellary, Chitradurga, and Davangere districts in the first stage.

Next, it would cover Kolar, Tumkur, Shimoga, Mysore, Dakshina Kannada, Gadag, Gulbarga, and Bidar districts. In six months, Haveri, Udupi, Chamarajanagar, Uttara Kannada, and Kodagu districts would be covered.

Dr. Maalakaraddy said the State already had 8,000 to 10,000 DOTS centres. As per the 2001 Census, Karnataka had 10 lakh TB patients, he added.

India has the world's largest TB-affected population with 1,000 people infected each day. The disease kills more people than AIDS, malaria, leprosy, and tropical diseases combined. It is commonest opportunistic infection among those infected with HIV.

H. Sudarshan, Chairman, Task Force on Health, and officials were present.

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