World TB Day 2002 - In the News

Agence France Presse
Headline: TB claims 20,000 lives annually in Vietnam: report
Date: March 24, 2002 Sunday

Tuberculosis claims some 20,000 lives in Vietnam every year, the head of the country's tuberculosis institute said in remarks published on World TB Day this Sunday.

Health authorities found 145,000 Vietnamese suffered from TB every year, and an average of 55 died of the disease every day, institute director Nguyen Viet Co told the Hanoi Moi daily.

The government spends 6.5 million dollars annually to fight the disease, which mainly afflicts impoverished people in the Mekong delta and those living in remote mountainous areas.

But Co noted a rapid rise in the number of people suffering from both tuberculosis and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Vietnam's health ministry hopes to reduce TB incidence by five percent every year, Co said.

The World Health Organisation said Wednesday that tuberculosis kills 1,000 mostly poor productive workers daily in East Asia and the Pacific.

The highest levels of TB in the region are found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Vietnam -- all countries with high levels of poverty, it said.

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