THIMPHU, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Bhutan has joined global efforts to end the tuberculosis (TB) epidemic by 2035, national TB control program officials said here on Sunday.
The strategy might be ambitious and require concerted efforts from all individuals, however, the government is committed to reaching 90 percent of those in need of treatment, they told Xinhua.
Although Bhutan has made impressive progress in TB case detection and achieving high treatment success rate of 90 percent, it has been faced with increasing
MDR-TB (multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis) cases over the last few years, they said.
While the overall number of TB cases decreased from 1,328 in 2010 to 1,145 in 2016, that of MDR-TB cases increased from just six in 2005 to 55 in 2016 in the tiny kingdom, according to the officials.
They said globally MDR-TB is an emerging public health problem and the World Health Organization has declared it as a crisis. Only one in four MDR-TB cases are detected and only one in two cases are cured.
The global TB report 2016 stated that 10.4 million TB cases were reported in 2015 around the world, of which 45.6 percent of the cases were from Southeast Asia.
The World Health Organization passed a resolution in May 2014, approving the new post-2015 Global TB Strategy which aims to reduce TB deaths by 95 percent and to cut new cases by 90 percent between 2015 and 2035.
