AP Features, March 12th, 2007
Tuberculosis infects 3.5 million people and kills nearly 300,000 in the Western Pacific region each year, despite recent progress by countries to provide better health care, the World Health Organization said Monday.
The region has achieved a 2005 target of detecting at least 70 percent of TB cases and curing at least 85 percent of those detected, the WHO said in a statement.
The next goal is to cut TB prevalence and deaths by half in 2010 compared to 2000 levels, according to the statement issued at the start of a three-day meeting of international health officials and TB experts in Malaysia's eastern state of Sarawak.
The WHO recorded more than 800,000 TB cases in the Western Pacific in 2000, with a regional cure rate of 96 percent.
"Despite the good progress made in recent years, over 3.5 million TB cases and nearly 300,000 deaths still occur in the region every year," said Pieter van Maaren, regional adviser for the Stop TB program in WHO's Western Pacific regional office.
"We clearly still have a lot of work to do before we can meet the goal we have set for ourselves," van Maaren added in the statement.
The respiratory illness, spread by coughing and sneezing, is the world's deadliest curable infectious disease. The WHO has estimated 1.7 million people die worldwide from TB every year.
The WHO has boosted technical assistance to Western Pacific countries to curb TB since 1999, with increased funding from parties such as the Australian Agency for International Development, the Japanese government, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank.
However, most nations face significant constraints toward reaching the 2010 goal, the statement said, noting that limited access to health care, multidrug-resistant TB and other health system flaws were among the main obstacles.
The WHO also warned that TB-HIV co-infection was "a major challenge" in Cambodia, Papua New Guinea and other places where TB and HIV share common risk factors.
Western Pacific territories as defined by the WHO include Australia, New Zealand, Cambodia, China, Palau, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam.
