Vietnam sets up national committee to wipe out TB

Giving treatment to TB patients (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) – Prime Minister has approved the establishment
of a national committee on (TB) eradication.

Headed
by Deputy Prime Minister , the committee is designed to have a maximum
of 20 members. Its operation will be supported by the same apparatus that has
been running projects for the National Committee for AIDS, Drugs and
Prostitution Prevention and Control.

According
to Prof. Dr. Nguyen Viet Nhung, head of the National TB Prevention Programme
and Director of the National Lung Hospital, Vietnam is in the world’s top 30
countries with high TB burden. The country ranks 16th in the number of TB
patients and 13th in the rankings of drug-resistant TB patients. Seventy
percent of the TB patients are of working age (between 15 and 55).

Thanks
to the national strategy on TB prevention by 2020 with a vision toward 2030 and
advanced diagnosis system, the number of TB cases recorded in Vietnam has so far
dropped dramatically.

In
the past decade, the figure fell by 31 percent, average 3.8 percent each year.

The
World Health Organisation said that Vietnam is on the right track to end TB by
2030.-VNA