Deputy Minister Assistant of Preventative Medicine, Dr. Zyad Meemish, clarified that tuberculosis (TB) new registered cases in the Kingdom has reached 4349 in 2010, of which 16.6 incident rate per 100 thousand people and an increase of 1 per 100 thousand from last year.
Such statistics are resulted from the increase in discovered cases by Tuberculosis Control National Program. TB is considered contagious and caused by bacilli microbe which lives for many years in dark, humid and poorly ventilated places and dies in 5 minutes when exposed to direct sunlight.
On the occasion of the Kingdom's participation in World Tuberculosis Day, which Logo is "On the move against Tuberculosis- Transforming the fight towards elimination", Dr. Meemish pointed out that the Kingdom, represented by Tuberculosis Control National Program launched by Ministry of Health, has adopted a short term treatment strategy since 2000 based on World Health Organization directions in regards of monitoring TB patients' health condition while they are hospitalize and continue their treatment course in home through training a family member.
He also added that Tuberculosis Control National Program has improved markedly in recent years, which increased TB discovered cases and treatment rates have been successfully raised from 71% in 2008 to 74.9% in 2009.
Rates of patients who stopped treatment after diagnoses declined from 9.2 in 2008 to 7.5 in 2009. The National Program included examining people with close contact with TB patients and contributed greatly in reducing incidence rates to 1% as well as drug-resistance incidents rates to less than 0.5%.
Dr. Meemish continued that the program is supervised periodically by the Ministry through field visitations performed by treatment units related to the program. E-reporting program was also developed to register discovered incident cases in different regions, which contributed greatly in providing annual and quarterly reports sent periodically to World Health Organization.
He also added that epidemiological study of TB bacteria spread in the Kingdom is accomplished with the cooperation of King Faisal Specialized Hospital and Research Centre in Riyadh.
Such study will be published during the second half of the year 2011.