DOH sets targets for anti-TB program

The Department of Health (DOH) aims to treat almost half of Filipinos afflicted with an infectious type of tuberculosis before the year ends.

Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit said they target 100,000 of the 230,000 Filipino adults who have contagious TB and who have been found to infect other people in their immediate surroundings without them aware of it.

Dayrit said the Directly Observed Treatment, Short-Course (DOTS) is the only proven strategy to ensure the completion of TB treatment.

With this strategy, the annual number of infections will significantly be reduced, the DOH, which observes Lung Month this August, believes.

"The concept of DOTS is to observe if the patients are religiously taking their medicine. Health workers are also tasked to intensively follow up the patients’ progress," he said.

With DOTS, patients are required to take four kinds of drugs for six months: four of them for two months, and the rest in the succeeding months. Failure to follow the regimen will trigger a resistance to the TB virus, Dayrit warned.

Coverage

DOTS was piloted in Antique, Batangas and Iloilo in 1996. It was later expanded to cover at present 67 or 86 percent of the provinces and 79 or 93 percent of cities. Its coverage is expected to be 100 percent by yearend.

Dayrit attributed the DOTS’ success mainly to the support and assistance of local government units (LGUs) and international partners.

"The reduction of TB cases is another anti-poverty measure because the disease mostly affects those living in the slums and males in their productive years," he said.

TB is still a major public health problem with 75 Filipinos dying of the disease everyday. The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks the Philippines third among 22 countries with a high prevalence rate of TB, at 198.1 per 100,000 population.

TB is spread when a healthy person gets exposed to the oral discharge or nasal droplets of an infected person.

Dayrit urged the public to observe a healthy lifestyle, including having a balanced diet and enough sleep, to maintain a strong immune system against TB.