Taiwan Doubles TB Control Funding in 2006

The Taiwanese government this year has doubled its funding for tuberculosis prevention and control as part of efforts to reduce TB prevalence and morbidity by 50% within 10 years, a Department of Health official said Wednesday, the Central News Agency reports. Huang Rui-ming, director of DOH's Chest Hospital in Tainan, Taiwan, said the money will go toward overhauling the TB medical network, increasing the monitoring of patients to ensure complete adherence to treatment, enhancing health worker training, increasing medical subsidies for indigenous areas where TB is prevalent, and offering chest X-rays to the public. According to Huang, between 15,000 and 17,000 people in Taiwan become infected with TB annually, and 1,300 die from the disease. He added that the disease causes almost 70% of deaths from notifiable diseases. The TB cure rate in Taiwan is 79%, lower than the World Health Organization's target of 85%, Huang said. In addition, the number of patients with multi-drug resistant TB has increased almost tenfold over the last decade, he said (Low, Central News Agency, 3/15).