KATHMANDU: An estimated 45 per cent of the population in Nepal is infected with Tuberculosis (TB) and 60 per cent of those infected are among the productive age group, Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) revealed here today. The alarming government data were revealed on the occasion of the 56th National Tuberculosis Control Day, marked today nationwide. Devendra Bahadur Pradhan, president of Nepal Anti-Tuberculosis Association, said that around 5,000 to 7,000 people died annually from the TB infection. Talking to The Himalayan Times, Pradhan said that the government should be more concerned about the disease and should introduce effective programmes for its mitigation. Many health experts, including Pradhan, stress on the 'preventive measures' rather than 'curative measures' to tackle the TB. Dr Puspha Malla, director of National Tuberculosis Programme, said that they were applying Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course (DOTS) strategy for the treatment. She added that the DOTS programme has recently been providing evidences that it was the most effective remedial measures against TB. She shared that they had thus far treated around 3, 50,000 TB patients. In Nepal DOTS was introduced in 1996 with the joint effort of government and World Health Organisation (WHO). Ever since, the cure rate in the first group of DOTS patients was over 89 per cent, according to MoHP. According to WHO, each person with active TB can infect on average 10 to 15 people a year and more than two billion people, equal to one third of the world's total population, are infected with TB bacilli. It further mentioned that one in every ten of those people will become sick with active TB in his or her lifetime. People living with HIV are at a much greater risk. WHO, 2007 report has shown that the vast majority of TB deaths are in the developing world, with more than half occurring in Asia. In Nepal, about 5,000 to 7,000 people die annually from TB, MoHP said.