Western Pacific nations do well in anti-TB campaign – WHO

Countries in the Western Pacific region have made good progress in their anti-tuberculosis (TB) campaigns but the battle is not yet over, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

"As a region, we have achieved the global target set for 2005. We now face the challenge of making an even greater impact on the TB burden by meeting the regional targets for 2010," noted Dr. Peter van Maaren, WHO Region Office for Western Pacific’s adviser for the Stop TB Programme.

By 2005, WHO has targeted to detect 70 percent of TB cases, to cure 85 percent cases of those detected and to achieve a full coverage with Directly Observe Treatment Short course (DOTS), WHO’s recommended treatment strategy for TB.

The interim targets were set to eventually meet the 2010 goals of reducing the TB prevalence and death by half compared to the 2000 levels. Western Pacific is the first and only region that has achieved the targets.

In 1999, a TB crisis was declared in the region, prompting member-countries to intensify programs against the illness.

WHO also increased its technical assistance to countries through the Australian Agency for International Development, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, the Japanese government, the United States Agency for International Development and World Bank.

Van Maaren added that over 3.5 million TB cases and almost 300,000 deaths still occur in the region annually despite the good progress the program made in past years.

"We clearly still have a lot of work to do before we can meet the goal we have set for ourselves," he said.

Among the "constraints" faced by countries in escalating TB control are multi-drug resistance TB, HIV-associated TB epidemics, limited access to and quality of DOTS services and inadequate involvement of care providers. – Sheila Crisostomo