Multan
In another bid to control the spread of Tuberculosis, the Punjab Provincial TB Control Programme, is going to engage pharmacies as referral agents for the detection of new patients and making their cases notifyable, The Nation has learnt.
The initiative is part of a proactive approach adopted by the Health Department to contain the killer disease and it has been approved by the government.
Earlier, a number of local public welfare organisations like Al-Khidmat Foundation had been taken on-board to offer free diagnosis services to the patients besides international NGOs to get technical and financial support for TB eradication campaign.
Punjab TB Control Programme Program Manager Dr Abdul Majeed Akhtar confirmed the initiative and told The Nation that efforts were being made to detect maximum number of cases. “Once we succeed in achieving this goal, the number of patients will decline drastically,” he claimed.
World Health Organization (WHO) says that TB infects over of eight million people every year and kills an estimated three million annually across the world. Pakistan ranks 5th amongst 22 countries with the highest burden of TB in the world and the fourth highest in terms of multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis as it contributes about 44 per cent of tuberculosis burden in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.
A total of 298,472 cases were reported from across the country in 2013.
Health department’s statistics reveal that the highest number of TB cases were reported from Punjab than rest of all other provinces and regions during 2013 as it constituted about 56 per cent case load of Pakistan. A total of 182446 cases of all types were reported from Punjab, 57,780 Sindh, 38,779 KPK, 6,798 Balochistan, 5,407 Azad Jammu and Kashmir, 4,042 FATA and 1,597 Islamabad. The number of reported cases is mounting every year as the total of 2012 stands at 172,791 and 2011 at 162,534.
Dr Abdul Majeed Akhtar was of the opinion that the increase in the number of reported cases was a good sign. “It’s known as onion phenomenon in public health sector. The cases surface one after one like peels of onion. If the number of reported cases goes up, the number of upcoming cases will come down automatically. It enables us to treat maximum number of patients,” he added.
Giving details of treatment facilities, he said that currently 12 tertiary care institutions were providing MDR-TB services to the patients in the country out of which five including Gulab Devi Hospital Lahore, Mayo Hospital Lahore, Leprosy Hospital Rawalpindi, Nishtar Medical College Hospital Multan and Samli Hospital Murree were located in Punjab. Similarly, he added, 541 peripheral labs at diagnostic centre level, 35 intermediate labs at district level and two reference labs at Institute of Public Health Lahore and Nishtar Hospital Multan are offering free diagnostic and treatment facilities to the patients. “Some more initiatives like expansion of DOTS in Prisons, expansion of Public Private Mix, implementation of TB DOTS in railway and implementation of MDR TB under green light committee of WHO are also in pipeline. These initiatives will enable us to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),” he noted.
In order to achieve MDGs, the government has stepped up campaign in collaboration with different international organisations. Currently, different international NGOs and agencies including World Health Orgranisation (WHO), Global Drug Facility (GDF), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Global Fund to Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) (German Technical Cooperation), Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau Bankengruppe (KfW), Department for International Development (DFID), International Union Against TB and Lungs Disease (IUATLD), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Australian Agency for International Development (AUSAID) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) are extending technical and financial assistance to Pakistan.