More than 60,000 TB deaths a year
The World Health Organization released statistics about tuberculosis to mark World TB Day: in Pakistan, one person is infected by TB every two minutes, and another dies every eight minutes.
Islamabad (AsiaNews) Around 60,000 people die of tuberculosis (TB) every year in Pakistan, which ranks sixth among countries worst-affected by the disease worldwide.
According to information released by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 24 March, to mark World TB Day, the country accounted for 43% of TB cases in the WHO eastern Mediterranean region.
During the general audience on 22 March, the Pope referred to World TB Day, saying it was "an appropriate occasion to call for renewed commitment to treat our sick brothers, who often live in great poverty."
Global statistics bear the Pontiff's words out: according to WHO, 95% of TB cases worldwide are found in economically disadvantaged nations, where 98% of related deaths take place, around 2.7 million victims. It is the disease with the highest mortality rate in the world right now.
More than one million people have TB in Pakistan: one person is infected every two minutes and one dies every eight minutes. In 2001, Islamabad described the disease as a "national emergency" and boosted state funding for strategies seeking to counter it. It developed short-course and directly observed therapy (DOTS), in Balochistan, and use of this treatment spread to nearly half the country within a year.
Before 2000, the most common way of dealing with TB cases was to isolate them in special sanitoriums, where they would be all but forgotten. Now a new school of thought is emerging that considers a person with TB to be like any other sick person, with the possibility of survival and living a normal life.
However, a pressing problem remains the high extent of prevalence of the disease: when the virus is fertile, it can infect up to 10 people at the same time.
The marginalization and poverty of sick people has fuelled another trend: 90% of new Pakistani doctors do not know how to, or do not wish to, treat TB. The very doctors of the DOTS strategy, despite their specific training, do not manage to treat more than 10% of the TB-stricken population.
At the end of the general audience, Benedict XVI said: "I encourage initiatives of aid and solidarity with them, and express hope that they will always be assured dignified conditions of life."
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