The AKU Professor and Service Line Chief, Dr Bushra Jamil, said at MoU ceremony that the AKUH is delivering high quality care utilizing best practices for patients of all ages with all forms of tuberculosis according to international standards. The AKU Mycobacterial Laboratory is the only Supranational Reference Laboratory for TB in the country. She said that the role of National and Provincial TB Control Programmes in engaging private institutions through Public Private Mix (PPM) strategy is commendable.
The AKUH has the largest group of infectious diseases specialists in the country who will be working in collaboration with the Pharmacy Services at the AKUH, to dispense quality TB medicines.
The TB Treatment and Referral Centre is also aimed at educating the public that TB is not a silent disease and can be recognized by its evident symptoms (persistent cough for more than 3 weeks, low grade fever, coughing up blood, night sweats, loss of appetite and weight and perpetual fatigue) and can be treated with antibiotics over a course of 6 months.
Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that most commonly affects the lungs. However, it can also affect any part of the body such as the kidneys, eyes, joints, spine, and brain. TB is a curable disease but can be fatal, if not detected and treated, properly. TB poses a major public health challenge in Pakistan. In 2015, Pakistan was ranked fifth amongst TB high-burden countries worldwide according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and accounted for 61% of the TB burden in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region.
TB is a contagious disease and an untreated patient can infect up to 15 people over the course of a year. Although treatable, the disease is spreading across Pakistan due to factors including delays in its diagnosis, inappropriate and unsupervised use of medicines and an absence of social support programmes for high risk populations.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017