Tamil Nadu - Nagapattinam   

Steps taken to control TB

On a mission: An awareness rally being flagged off to mark the World Tuberculosis Day in Nagapattinam on Tuesday.

NAGAPATTINAM: Nearly 1,500 new tuberculosis cases are detected every year in Nagapattinam district and 1,647 persons were identified as suffering from tuberculosis last year, said M. Jayaraman, Collector, here on Tuesday.

Addressing the World Tuberculosis Day function after flagging off a rally of doctors and nurses at CSI school, the Collector said that all primary health centres, sub health centres and Government Hospitals were providing free treatment to tuberculosis patients.

He pointed out that the tuberculosis was not a hereditary one and could easily be treated completely within six to eight months if medicines were taken regularly.

Mr. Jayaraman appealed to the staff in the PHCs and Government Hospitals to take special care on the tuberculosis patients and create confidence in them that the disease could be cured completely. He pointed out that two persons die every three minutes of tuberculosis in the country and said that the Government took effective measures to control them.

The Collector said that the World Tuberculosis Day (March 24) was intended to create public awareness that tuberculosis today remained an epidemic in much of the world causing the deaths of about 1.6 million people each year, mostly in the third world countries.

Dr. Robert Koch on this day in 1982 astounded the scientific community by announcing that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis, the TB bacillus.

R. Veerakumar, Deputy Director (Tuberculosis), V. Poorvadevi, Joint Director of Health Services, Nagapattinam and others spoke.

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