World Tuberculosis Day, which was being observed throughout the world on Saturday, was also marked at Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT) with an aim to create awareness amongst masses about the contiguous and debilitating disease.
Experts included Infectious diseases specialists Dr. Asma Nasim, Dr. Sunil Dodani and Dr. Zaheer-uddin Baber, Dr. Masroor Afridi, Ms. Kehkashan and other related medical staff. A large number of people from all walks of life attended the event and highly benefitted from it.
On this occasion, SIUT had chalked out a plan where TB experts of SIUT informed the visitors that Pakistan was included amongst seven countries accounted for 64% of all the new cases in the global perspective. They said Pakistan was also a high burden country for Multi-drug resistant TB. Giving educational lecture about the disease the experts pointed out that Tuberculosis was an airborne disease, and can be caught by breathing in the air that an infected person had contaminated, through breathing and coughing. Tuberculosis is considered as one of the top 10 causes of deaths worldwide. In 2016, there were around 10.4 million new cases reported globally with a mortality of 1.7 million. In Pakistan, during the year 2016, it was estimated that 518,000 patients were diagnosed with TB with an incidence of 268/100,000 population.
Talking about symptoms, they informed that symptoms include a lasting cough, fatigue, coughing up blood, chest pain, sweating at night, fever, loss of appetite, and weight loss. It can affect any organ of the body. They said that the basic aim of organizing this event was to raise mass awareness about TB in terms of its sign & symptoms, spread, treatment and most importantly to highlight its preventive measures.
The program was organized under the auspices of Department of Infectious Diseases, SIUT which focused on the communities where active cases were detected. The program was held at three centers, of SIUT including primary healthcare center Kathore, Malir and SIUT Chalbani Medical Center of Sukkur. There were free medical checkups & consultations, dietary/nutritional advices, distribution of educational literature on TB, viewing of disease educational videos, exhibition of informative posters/banners and interactive sessions between SIUT medical staff members with the audience.
