The Hindu : National : `Entire country to be covered under DOTS programme by June'

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Friday, Mar 25, 2005

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`Entire country to be covered under DOTS programme by June'

By Our Staff Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 24. The entire country would be covered under the Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse (DOTS) by June 2005.

The Union Health and Family Welfare Minister, Anbumani Ramadoss, announced this after flagging off an awareness run to mark the World TB Day today.

He said the reach of the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP) had been widened with the greater involvement of partners from all sectors.

Action was centred on building sustainable partnerships to treat TB and integrate TB initiatives into community activities.

The run was organised by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Confederation of Indian Industry and World Economic Forum.

The `DOTS-Sure Cure for TB' run was aimed athighlighting the message that DOTS promised high cure rates and to urge policy-makers to make the treatment available.

`Biggest challenge'

Today TB was one of the biggest challenges the nation faced, and the disease would have to be completely eliminated if India was to achieve super power status, he said.

As many as 1.8 million cases, one-fifth of the new cases reported every year globally, occur in India, of which 0.8 million are infectious cases. About 400,000 deaths occur due to tuberculosis each year, more than 1,000 a day.

According to government figures, tuberculosis costs more than $ 3 billion to society while 100 million productive workdays are estimated to be lost due to the illness.

Economic decline, poor health systems, insufficient use of TB control measures, the spread of HIV/AIDS and the emergence of multi-drug resistant TB, all contribute to the rise in the disease in many developing economies.

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