A TB awareness organization in Lae has revealed that people contracting TB over the last three years, have increased in the Morobe Province.
The province’s TB awareness project revealed that TB statistics have doubled over the last two years.
Added with the country’s poor health system, the organization says it leaves almost anybody vulnerable to this airborne disease.
Tuberculosis or TB, has the 2nd highest record of people being affected, making it the 2nd leading infectious disease, to HIV AIDS in Papua New Guinea.
In Lae, statistics gathered in the last few months, have doubled from previous statistics, gathered two years ago.
The country is also beginning to see new waves of TB patients that go to the clinics, to seek treatment. A new brand of TB called ‘the drug resistant Tuberculosis' is evolving. Doctors reported that patients diagnosed with drug resistant TB, cannot easily be cured.
This means the patient maybe on treatment for two years and not six months, like any other person, who has the standard TB infection.
Health reports have suggested that, many people who are TB Resistant, cannot easily be diagnosed and could spread the disease more easily. But health centres that are concentrating on combating the disease, are faced with a much bigger problem.
Statistics gathered and presented are from patients that have access to reliable health care services, mostly nearest to the urban areas.
Those that live in remote parts of the country may not be as lucky and doctors say with the country’s poorly sourced health centres, it is again, one of the outstanding issues that hinders effective TB awareness and treatment of patients.
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