A medical worker gives advice on TB to residents (Photo: VNA)HCM City (VNA) – Ho Chi Minh City is expanding the
“” programme to some other districts in 2017 in an effort to
accelerate the eradication of (TB), said chairman of the city’s
Public Health Association Dr. Le Truong Giang.
Giang told participants at a meeting, which was
held on March 28 in response to World Tuberculosis Day (March 24), that about
20,000 new TB cases are reported in HCM City each year.
Apart from the “Proper Care” programme, HCM City
will also take more measures such as applying new testing techniques to improve
TB diagnosis capacity, paying special attention to TB in children to give
treatment and curb transmission, and connecting public and private healthcare
systems in anti-TB activities, he added.
Director of Go Vap district’s preventive
medicine centre Dr. Nguyen Trung Hoa said his centre has piloted the “Proper
Care” programme since 2014. This programme aims to increase the detection of TB
cases, reduce the abandonment of treatment, raise the success rate of treatment,
and improve public awareness of the disease.
After two years, nearly 600,000 people have
gained access to the programme with 136,000 of them were screened for TB. A
total of 565 new cases were detected.
Notably, the rate of TB patients abandoning
treatment has dropped sharply from 7 percent in the past to 0.8 percent at
present, Hoa said, adding that the widespread network of advisors who meet and
give advice to local residents has become an important link in cutting down the
treatment abandonment rate.
HCM City is striving to reduce the numbers of TB
patients and deaths to below 131 and 10 in every 100,000 residents by 2020,
respectively. It also hopes to control the rate of
patients at below 5 percent of the total new TB cases.-VNA
Source: VietnamPlus
