Push For Better Tuberculosis Figures

Push for better TB figures

BANGKOK: -- Public Health Minister Witthaya Kaewparadai yesterday urged health volunteers to ensure that drug-resistant TB sufferers took their medicine continuously for six months, in a bid to get Thailand ranked lower than 23rd on the world scale of TB infections by country.

Thailand currently ranks 18th. Witthaya said patients with drug-resistance, 10 per cent of all TB patients in Thailand, incurred Bt200,000 a year each in expenses as the medicine was still experimental. He said the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation was improving

the drug formula so patients could take four tablets a day instead of the usual eight.

-- The Nation 2009-04-19