Vietnam still records thousands of new tuberculosis cases

Every year, Vietnam still records thousands of new cases of tuberculosis, and many people with tuberculosis have not been detected and continue to spread the disease in the community.

Doctors at Nghe An Tuberculosis and Lung Hospital examine patients.

30% of tuberculosis patients in the community are not detected

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), despite some significant achievements in tuberculosis prevention, tuberculosis continues to be one of the major public health problems globally.

In 2014, an estimated 9.6 million people worldwide had TB, 13% of whom were co-infected with HIV. TB is the second leading cause of death from infectious diseases, killing an estimated 1.3 million people, including about 510,000 women. This makes TB one of the leading causes of death among women.

Meanwhile, the situation of drug-resistant tuberculosis is becoming more complicated and has appeared in most countries. In 2013 alone, the estimated global prevalence of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis was 3.5% among new patients and 20.5% among re-treated patients.

Associate Professor, Doctor Nguyen Viet Nhung, Director of the Central Lung Hospital, emphasized that tuberculosis has existed for a long time and the main cause is tuberculosis bacteria. Although it has existed for a long time, tuberculosis still kills nearly 2 million people worldwide each year.

In Vietnam, although there have been significant achievements in disease control, up to now, 46 people still die from tuberculosis every day. Currently, diagnostic tools have made much progress, according to calculations, Vietnam can end tuberculosis but still faces many difficulties and challenges.

The burden of tuberculosis in Vietnam is still high, ranking 12th out of 20 countries with the highest number of tuberculosis patients globally, and 14th out of 27 countries with the highest burden of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the world.

Every year, Vietnam has about 130,000 new TB patients, but only about 70% are detected, while 30% of TB patients in the community have not been detected. This is worrying, because people with TB who have not been detected will be the source of spreading the disease to the community.

In 2015, the total number of tuberculosis patients detected was more than 100,000 people, including more than 50,000 pulmonary tuberculosis patients. The Southern region has the highest rate of pulmonary tuberculosis in the country.

Compared to 2014, the number of newly detected pulmonary tuberculosis patients nationwide in 2015 increased by 155 people. Notably, each year Vietnam has more than 5,000 drug-resistant tuberculosis patients, of which nearly 6% are extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Raising awareness for people to prevent disease

According to the report of the National Tuberculosis Control Program, in recent years, the work of detecting the source of infection has encountered many difficulties due to various reasons. Among them, people's understanding of tuberculosis and how to prevent it is still limited, and society still discriminates against tuberculosis patients, leading to people often hiding their illness.

Meanwhile, most tuberculosis patients are poor, have difficult economic conditions, and have little access to the media, so they are not aware of preventing and limiting the spread of the disease to the community.

The TB prevention teams at district, town and city levels have uneven professional qualifications, so TB prevention and control work is still limited, especially in remote areas. At the same time, coordination between general hospitals and medical centers is not good, and the quality of testing does not meet requirements. Another difficulty is that this work has not been highly socialized; funding for TB prevention and control program activities is still limited...

Associate Professor, Doctor Nguyen Viet Nhung affirmed that in the past, Vietnam had no cure and did not have much information about this disease, but now people with drug-resistant tuberculosis, including extremely drug-resistant patients, have treatment regimens.

The previous treatment regimen for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis patients lasted from 20-24 months, which discouraged many patients. Currently, Vietnam has applied a new treatment regimen for drug-resistant tuberculosis, the treatment time has been shortened to only 9 months, helping to save treatment costs and additional costs...

Dr. Nguyen Binh Hoa, Secretary of the National Tuberculosis Control Program, emphasized that the goal of the National Tuberculosis Control Program by 2020 is that Vietnam will strive to reduce the incidence of tuberculosis in the community to 131/100,000 people; reduce the number of deaths due to tuberculosis to less than 10/100,000 people; 100% of tuberculosis patients will be treated with the Program's standard treatment regimen and provided with adequate, quality-assured anti-tuberculosis drugs.

At the same time, Vietnam will build a network of tuberculosis and lung disease research including domestic and international units and individuals to create a combined strength to implement the global strategy to eradicate tuberculosis. This will contribute significantly to improving the quality of examination and treatment in the tuberculosis specialty at medical facilities nationwide.

For TB prevention and control activities at the grassroots level to be effective, the most important thing is to change people's awareness and improve their understanding of TB so that they can proactively detect and prevent the disease for themselves and the community. This is not only the responsibility of the staff directly involved in TB prevention and control, but also requires the synchronous coordination of all levels, sectors and each individual.

Tuberculosis can be completely cured and prevented from spreading to the community if the patient is detected early and treated properly./.

According to Vietnamplus