KABUL - Afghanistan is among the world’s top 22 tuberculosis (TB) high-burden countries and the disease is a major public health problem, according to its Ministry for Public Heath (MoPH).

“Every year, there are 189 new cases of tuberculosis for every 100,000 people – it means 56,000 new cases occur annually,” said the Minister for Public Health, Suraya Dalil, in her comments at a ceremony held in the capital, Kabul, to mark World TB Day, which is observed annually on 24 March.

The Day, marked this year globally with the call to “find…treat…cure tuberculosis patients,” aims at building public awareness that TB today remains an epidemic in much of the world, causing the deaths of nearly 1.5 million people each year, mostly in developing countries.

Tuberculosis is the world’s second most deadly infectious diseases among adults, after HIV/AIDS. Every year, TB kills 1.3 million people and causes nearly nine million to fall ill, according to the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO).

In his message for the Day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said everyone with TB should have access to the services they need for rapid diagnosis, treatment and cure.

“This is a matter of social justice. It is also an issue of global health security, given the rapidly emerging problem of patients with deadly, extensively drug-resistant TB going undetected,” Mr. Ban said in the message. “On World Tuberculosis Day, I call for intensified global solidarity to eradicate this preventable disease.”

In her comments at the Kabul ceremony, Ms. Dalil said that 37 out of every 100,000 Afghans die of tuberculosis annually. She also said that 65 per cent of the new sputum smear positive cases and 60 per cent of all TB cases that are reported to public clinics in 2013 were female. Women of reproductive age are more prone to be affected by TB.

“Short birth interval, high fertility, early marriage, malnutrition and other environmental and cultural factors are contributing to this problem,” said Ms. Dalil.

With the support of WHO, she added, a TB and gender research project will be launched to further explore why women are more affected by the disease than men.

The Public Health Minister noted that Afghanistan started implementing the ‘Directly Observed Treatment Short course (DOTS)’ strategy in 2002 and extended it in line with the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and Stop TB Partnership strategy till 2013. In collaboration with its partners, including WHO, the MoPH has renewed the strategic plan until 2017. One of the MDGs deals with combatting HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases – with TB among the latter.

The eight MDGs – which range from halving extreme poverty rates to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 – form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions.

Ms. Dalil also mentioned that a total of 31,622 TB cases were detected in 2013 despite expanding DOTS coverage within the country’s two main health services, the Basic Package of Health Service and Essential Package of Hospital Services.

The MoPH has been running a drug resistance tuberculosis management programme since June 2011 and it has diagnosed and enrolled 113 multiple drug resistance cases to date. Ms. Dalil added that during theplast 13 years, a total of 303,577 TB cases were detected and handled through directly-observed treatment.

“Afghanistan has observed a relatively high treatment success rate for new sputum smear-positive cases since introducing the DOTS strategy,” said Ms. Dalil, adding that a 90 per cent treatment success rate was reported for 2012.

In his comments at the Kabul event, WHO’s Country Representative for Afghanistan, Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, said that under the slogan ‘each patient counts,’ the UN health agency in the Eastern Mediterranean Region was calling this year for legislation on TB notification to be updated so that all cases of TB could be found, notified and treated.

“The good news is that we have very strong partnership against TB in Afghanistan under the leadership of the Ministry of Public Health,” said Mr. Peeperkorn.

He highlighted that WHO and the Government of Japan are planning a project which would help ensure anti-TB medicines and develop a drug management system for the National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTP) over the next three years, with a budget of approximately $12 million.