"Awareness Walk" Held To Mark World TB Day

An awareness walk was organized here on Monday in connection with World TB Day to be marked on March 24 across the globe

HYDERABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Mar, 2023 ) :An awareness walk was organized here on Monday in connection with World TB Day to be marked on March 24 across the globe.

The participants of the walk holding banners and placards in their hands marched from the Gul Centre roundabout to the Hyderabad press club and urged people that TB is a curable disease that can be treated with a 6-month course.

The organizers of the walk told the participants that every year more than 50,000 people die of Tuberculosis (TB) disease in Pakistan.

The Additional Director of Communicable Disease Centre Dr. Ali Akbar Dahri while talking to the media informed that as many as 610,000 people are infected with TB every year in Pakistan, of them, only 339,256 people can be treated, while 50,100 patients lost their lives due to it.

In Sindh, 142,781 people are being infected with TB annually, of whom only 88,777 are being treated while the rest of them were left out of the treatment facilities, Dr Dahri said.

He said TB was a 100% curable disease and a patient of this disease becomes completely healthy after 6 months of treatment, while the disease becomes incurable if the treatment had not been completed.

There are 339 TB diagnosis and treatment centres across Sindh where free treatment is available to patients, he said, adding the treatment cost of a TB patient is Rs 0.8 to one million rupees.