Almost 20% of TB cases recorded in Selangor last year

KAJANG: Selangor contributes to 19% of 25,739 tuberculosis (TB) cases recorded last year.
State Health director Datuk Dr Zailan Datuk Adnan said various countermeasures had been taken but the number of TB cases was still on the rise in Selangor.
"The number of TB cases in Selangor had saw an increase of 4% compared to 2015.
"The support of all quarters is needed to tackle the spread of TB," she said at the state-level World TB Day event held at Kajang Metropoint here today.
She added the number of TB cases in the country had rose by 6% to 25,739 in 2016 compared to 24,220 cases in 2015.
Death due to TB also registered an increase, up 15% from 1,696 in 2015 to 1,945 fatalities last year.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) in its End TB Strategy intends to make the world TB-free by 2035 in which the incidence of TB will be reduced by 90% and its mortality rate by 95%.
Meanwhile, The World TB Day, falls on March 24 each year.
The celebration is designed to build public awareness that TB remains an epidemic in most part of the world, causing the deaths of nearly one-and-a-half million people each year, mostly in developing countries.
It also commemorates the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch astounded the scientific community by announcing that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis, the TB bacillus.
At the time of Koch's announcement in Berlin, TB was raging through Europe and the Americas, causing the death of one out of every seven people.
Koch's discovery opened the way towards diagnosing and curing TB.