UNION MINISTER for Health and Sports Dr. Myint Htwe at-tended the 2019 World Tubercu-losis Day event held at Dagon Myothit (South) Township hall yesterday.

At the event Union Minister Dr. Myint Htwe said according to Global TB report (2018), My-anmar was still among the 30 countries of the world tubercu-losis occurs the most and the ministry was striving toward getting out of this list. Accord-ing to this report out of 100,000 persons 358 persons had TB in Myanmar and according to 2018 TB/HIV survey 9.3 per cent of new TB patients had HIV while 5 per cent had drug resistant TB. Without the coop-eration and participation of the people, the disease eradication and prevention work wouldn’t succeed and success could only be reached with the interest of the people and the cooperation of people’s organisations.

For the ministry to achieve the End TB by 2035, a national TB eradication five year stra-tegic plan based on End TB Strategy published by World Health Organisation was drawn up and implemented. Strate-gies that were in line with the country’s economic and social situation were being setup and implemented. The ministry was cooperating with a total of 38 local and foreign partner organ-isations and about 2,400 private general practitioners were also participating in TB eradica-tion. The disease eradication work could only be successful if there were full information on occurrence of TB a Man-datory TB Case Notification was announced and issued on 18 September 2018 and it was mandatory for private hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centers to report of any occurrence of TB.

The government had allo-cated K 14 million for TB eradi-cation work in 1995-1996. It was increased to K 5,568 million in 2016-2017 FY, K 4,241 million in 2017-2018 FY and more than K 4,000 million in 2018-2019 FY. In 2017, International Monetary Fund and 3MDG Group had provided supports worth US$ 19 million and US$ 1.2 million re-spectively. The allocated funds and supports were being uti-lized systematically and effec-tively, said the Union Minister.

Next, Region Hluttaw Speaker U Tin Maung Tun deliv-ered a speech followed by World Health Organization (WHO) Myanmar Representative Dr. Stephan Paul Jost read WHO Regional Director’s message.

Afterwards, Myanmar TB Association patron Prof. Dr. Kyaw Myint explained about TB eradication movement and USAID Mission Director Ms. Teresa McGhie explained about USAID’s TB eradication works and supports provided.

Later township awards for enthusiasm in TB prevention and eradication works and out-standing award for diagnostic centres were presented and observed the exhibitions dis-played.

World Tuberculosis Day was held with health education exhibits, health talks, question and answer session, free X-Ray diagnosis for TB with mobile X-Ray machine, free test for HIV and entertainment pro-grams. The theme of this year World Tuberculosis Day was simple and short “It’s Time.” — MNA (Translated by Zaw Min)