Kathmandu, March 24:

A total of 45 per cent of national population is infected with tuberculosis and every year 40,000 new patients are infected with the disease, a data released by the National Tuberculosis Programme (NTP), says.

Despite coverage of Direct Observed Treatment Short-Course (DOTS) across all 75 districts in the country, TB claims 5,000 to 7,000 lives annually, Dr Puspa Malla, director of the National Tuberculosis Centre (NTC) said today. Still 10 per cent of sub-health posts in the country do not have the access to DOTS programme due to various factors and many people in the remote areas in the country are still not able to get treatment, she said.

Timely detection and regular treatment can cure 85 per cent of the patients with TB, she said while speaking at a programme jointly organised by Ministry of Health and Population, Department of Health Services, National Tuberculosis Centre, World Health Organisation and others to mark the World TB Day today.

Until November 2007 NTP had been providing DOTS based services through 977 treatment centres and 3,115 sub-treatment centres across the country where 33,439 patients were treated annually, the NTP data revealed.

Sashi Shrestha, State Minister for Health and Population said poverty, difficult geographical terrain, illiteracy and the increasing prevalence of HIV/AIDS have created greater challenge to tackle TB. “Each individual needs to support to increase the access of every single patient to TB treatment,” she said while stressing the need for the private and corporate sectors to contribute to stop TB.

This year’s World TB Day slogan is ‘I am Stopping TB’.