Success of Anti-TB campaign in province hailed
TUBERCULOSIS (TB), considered the number six leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the country, is being fought well in the province with an 86 percent cure rate record.
Dr. Ana Theresa de Guzman, assistant provincial health officer, said Pangasinan has also achieved a case reduction rate of 73 percent, making the Provincial Health Office an awardee last March 24 in the World TB Day celebration as best provincial health office in terms of TB control program.
The Philippines ranked ninth among the 22 countries worldwide with high incidence of TB and third in the Western Pacific Region, according to Dr. Rogelio Ilagan, regional manager for Luzon and National Capital Region of Linking Initiatives and Networking to Control TB in the Philippines (TB Linc).
TB Linc was commissioned by the Philippine Business for Social Progress, a non- government organization, to implement a five-year project funded by the United States Agency for International Development from 2006 to 2011 by assisting the Department of Health (DOH) and the local government units in TB case detection and cure rates.
Ilagan, who was in Dagupan City for a seminar last Thursday, said based on World Health Organization (WHO), 133 in every 100,000 Filipinos are afflicted with tuberculosis or an incidence rate of 1.33 per 1,000.
De Guzman said as early as 1998, TB eradication has been part of the DOH’s flagship programs and has been included in its millennium goal that set 2016 as the target year when this contagious disease, prevalent among poor people under productive age of 25 to 65, is hopefully controlled.
The government has implemented the Directly Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS) strategy based on the experience of the WHO in Tanzania and other countries with high incidence of TB in controlling TB.
The DOH has piloted TB DOTS in 1996 in various parts of the country and the Ilocos Region including Pangasinan adopted it in 1999.
De Guzman said TB patients were given free medicines from New York for a straight six months medication course. The government spends about P8,000 to P9,000 per TB patient under this project.–EVA
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