Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Somalis triumph over killer tuberculosis

As the world marks World Tuberculosis Day on Tuesday, Somalia has taken strides towards meeting UN Millennium Development Goals for eradicating one of the major killer diseases in the Horn of Africa country, despite nearly two decades of civil strife, local health workers said Tuesday.

"Nearly 64 percent of detected cases of tuberculosis are treated with nearly 89 percent of those detected TB cases are successfully treated in Somalia," Abukar Ali Hilowle of Global Fund for TB Program Coordinator for Somalia told reporters.

Dr. Hilowle, who runs a main anti-TB centre in the Somali capital Mogadishu, said the detection and the treatment success rate mark significant progress towards eliminating the disease, the second biggest killer in Somalia after Malaria.

At Mercy TB Centre in Mogadishu, dozens of patients have been waiting to receive their daily dosage of drugs to treat the disease which according to the UN Millennium Development Goal should "halt and begin to reverse the incidence of TB by 2015".

"We receive almost three hundred people and nearly ten percent of those who come to this centre are found to be infected with TB," Hilowle said.

He added that the centre provides diagnosis, and controlled treatment where patients have to come to the centre for regular daily dosage of the six month treatment course to make sure that patients take their drugs as prescribed and not stop in midway which he said would result in "a potent drug resistant form of TB".

Omar Yusuf, who has been infected with TB for nearly a year, said he was getting treated after doctors told him he had the disease.

"I am better now and I come regularly to this centre to get my medication because that will make me better," Yusuf told Xinhua as he took his dosage at the anti-TB centre.

A three-week anti-TB campaigns to mark World TB Day have culminated in the Somali capital where people have witnessed TB awareness programs including dramas games and lectures by local doctors and nurses about the incidence and treatability of Tuberculosis, a contagious diseases that spreads, just like the common cold through the air.

Left untreated, doctors warned, each person with active TB disease will infect on average between 10 and 15 people every year.

Tuberculosis is one of the major killers in Africa alongside Malaria and HIV/AIDS.

Source: ChinaViews.cn

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