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RI health minister warns of TB's deadly reach
Tuberculosis has spread to almost parts of Indonesia, putting it just behind China and India among countries seeing the highest rates of new cases each year, the health minister said Monday
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Tuberculosis has spread to almost parts of Indonesia, putting it just behind China and India among countries seeing the highest rates of new cases each year, the health minister said Monday.
"The spread of tuberculosis spares almost no region in Indonesia," Minister Siti Fadillah Supari was quoted by Antara as saying in a written statement to mark International TB Day in Bali.
The minister said there were no fewer than 500,000 new tuberculosis cases every year in Indonesia.
Almost all the new cases are communicable, she said, which had led the disease to spread to almost all regions of the archipelago.
The minister's address was read out by I Nyoman Kandun, director general for disease control and sanitation affairs, at the Krobokan penitentiary in Kuta, Badung.
Siti said the country with the most new tuberculosis sufferers every year was India, with 815,000, followed by China with 595,000.
On the global scale, the number of new tuberculosis patients was 9.2 million in 2006, 1.7 million of whom died, the minister said.
Siti said domestically the highest TB rates -- 210 cases per 100,000 people -- were recorded in eastern Indonesia, covering Kalimantan, Papua, Maluku, West and East Nusa Tenggara.
Medium rates of the disease were found across Sumatra with 160 cases per 100,000 people, while Java and Bali saw the lowest rates with 64 per 100,000.
The minister said preventive measures had managed to reduce TB cases from 128 per 100,000 people in 1998 to 115 per 100,000 in 2003.
In 2006, the number had further fallen to 105, she added.
The health minister said she hoped the new cases would decline in line with the increasing awareness of the importance of maintaining human health and environmental cleanliness.
At the same event, Justice and Human Rights Minister Andi Matalatta said a total of 116 prisoners and detainees in prisons across Indonesia died of tuberculosis in 2007.
"TB is the number two killer disease among prison inmates in Indonesia after AIDS/HIV," he said.
Andi said the majority of prisoners and detainees who died of TB and AIDS/HIV also had a history of drug addiction.
The minister said he hoped all prisoners and detainees could benefit from the "Healthy Indonesia 2010" program.
Under the program, the government has tried to curb the spread of TB, AIDS/HIV and other deadly diseases in prisons and other detention centers, the justice minister said.
