Fujairah, March 25: The UAE is considered one of the low rated countries that are affected with Tuberculosis (TB) and, the health ministry continues to implement its national programme for fighting the killer disease.
Shaikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, Fujairah Crown Prince, along with Dr Hanif Hassan, UAE Minister of Health, attended the celebrations here on the occasion of World Tuberculosis Day.
Dr Hanif assured that the ministry continues to implement its national programme for fighting TB reassuring that the UAE is considered one of the low rated countries that are affected with the disease.
He called the attendees to make greater efforts in fighting the disease and their cooperation in acknowledging the society with the dangers of TB and ways of reducing it.
“The disease is still among us despite the scientific and technological progress. Unfortunately, mankind did not achieve its goals of Tuberculosis elimination and is still the most serious epidemic that kills human beings”, he added.
Dr Hanif Hassan explained that through this programme, the ministry put certain progressive goals to raise the level of recovery from infectious TB, achieve early detection of 80 per cent by 2015, and reduce the infected rates to less than 1 per cent per every 100 thousand of the population by 2050.
This dangerous epidemic harvests five thousand lives daily in reference to the statistics of international organisations; it is also the main factor for the deaths of two million people in the world annually.
Dr Hanif Hassan indicated that the Ministry of Health (MoH) provides free of charge preventive and diagnostic services for all the members of the society referring to the fact that fighting TB is possible through increasing our awareness and prevention campaigns.
In collaboration with all relevant sectors, the MoH also developed precautionary measures to prevent the presence of human cases with the UAE community, citizens and residents.
It is worth mentioning to know that the preventive medicine departments in the UAE are working firmly to hold any cases among the expatriates beginning with their residence medical tests and through the clinics and healthcare clinics’ reports of any infected cases.
The MoH condensed its awareness activities through the programs of the health education programmes to face the challenges of the spread of the disease, acknowledge the society members with the causes of the disease and ways of protection.
According to international statistics, TB is the biggest killer in the human history. It caused the death of 200 million people since 1882. Reports and studies refer to the death of one person every 15 seconds because of TB.
This dangerous epidemic claims 5,000 lives daily in reference to the statistics of international organisations; it is also the main factor for the deaths of two million people in the world annually.
The reports of the World Health Organization confirm that two billion cases of tuberculosis in one-third of the world’s population are affected by the disease. In 2007, more than 9 million people were infected; one million seven hundred and fifty thousand died of the disease.
International medical reports proved that every year half a million people are affected with the disease.
–Agencies