The Hindu : Kerala News : Campaign to arrest spread of TB

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 24, 2007
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Kerala

Kerala

Campaign to arrest spread of TB

Special Correspondent

`Awareness level of disease among people low'

KOCHI: For every one lakh people in Kerala, 203 catch tuberculosis every year. But most people come to know that they suffer from TB only after a long time after they have been infected. They start treatment only when they are at a critical stage. The majority of the affected, mostly the poor, do not comply with the drug regimen and drop out of treatment midway, thus worsening their health condition.

If you cough for more than three weeks, doctors say, you could be one of the new additions to the TB community. The first line of defence is a simple test of your sputum. If positive to this bacterial infection, immediately start on the drug regimen that lasts six to nine months. The positive news is: the investigation and treatment are totally free under the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP). Apart from the free drugs, there will be someone around to make sure that you take the drugs

The RNTCP aims to spot at least 70 per cent of the TB affected people and to permanently cure at least 85 per cent of them. But, despite TB taking so many millions of lives every year, the awareness level about the disease among the masses is very low. In spite of the fact that it is totally curable with appropriate and prompt medication, still there is a lot of stigma attached to this disease. TB, doctors say, is not a poor man's disease, though most of the victims are the poor simply because of their lack of access to a decent living condition. To highlight the need to combat TB and motivate people to get a check-up, March 24 is observed as the World TB Day. This year, an entire month has been devoted to battle TB. On Saturday, an intensive campaign to spread the awareness about the disease is being launched.

In Ernakulam, the district-level campaign will begin at a function at the taluk hospital at Perumbavoor.

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