Marshalls take measures To tackle tuberculosis
Marshalls Island: The Government of the Marshalls Islands is taking
emergency measures to tackle an outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis
in the western Pacific nation, officials said Thursday.
Only six cases of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) have so
far been confirmed in the tiny nation of around 55,000 people but there
are fears it will spread further.
The cabinet Wednesday authorized US &1.9 million in emergency funding
to beef up the Ministry of Health’s prevention program for tuberculosis,
an infectious disease which killed more than 1.7 million people in 2007,
according to World Health Organisation figures.
The Cabinet also approved regulations banning known patients with
regular tuberculosis and MDR-TB and their contacts from travelling
outside the Marshall Islands without the approval of the director of
public health.
Majuro Hospital administrator Marie Lanwi-Paul said Thursday the
ministry was urgently stepping up screening and treatment of
tuberculosis.
The large number of people who have had contact with MDR-TB patients
would need to be identified and treated with preventive drugs for about
nine months, Lanwi-Paul said.
Health officials in the second major urban centre of Ebeye have
identified up to 200 possible contacts of the four patients diagnosed
with MDR-TB, and are screening them for the disease.
MDR-TB cases are increasing throughout the Pacific islands, said an
official at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) in Noumea.
Cases have been also been reported in the Federated States of
Micronesia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Kiribati, Samoa and
Papua New Guinea, said Janet O’Connor of the SPC’s tuberculosis
division. While normal tuberculosis can be cured within six months, MDR-TB
requires extensive treatment for up to two years with a combination of
drugs, which have more side effects. AFP
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