Our Correspondent Balakot
World Health Organization (WHO) Director KP Dr Maqsood Bangash Saturday said that Tuberculosis (TB) is a curable disease and can be treated within six months with regular medication. He said brain TB takes a year to cure the disease while blood tests can help to confirm or rule out active or latent TB as the tests measure infected person’s immune system and reaction to TB bacteria.
Talking about the treatment of the TB the director WHO said that Tuberculosis is a 6000 years old contagious infection that usually attacks the lungs, it can also spread to other parts of the body like the brain and spine and also infects other people. He said this while addressing a daylong seminar on TB at Balakot.
He said that we have the testing facility of TB in 290 TB centers all over the province and soon we would establish a clinic at Kaghan valley. Dr. Bangash further said that bacteria called Mycobacterium which causes TB was discovered in 1882, if someone has tuberculosis, he or she may not have any symptoms, because the germs that cause this illness can live in the body without making the infected person sick, adding he said.
WHO director disclosed that in fact, most people who get infected with TB are able to fight the germs before they spread, doctors call this ‘latent TB’ infection, but if the germs begin to multiply, the infected person would become sick with tuberculosis and this type is termed as ‘active TB’. While talking about the symptoms of TB Dr. Maqsood said that the infected person may be found with a bad cough that lasts 3 weeks or longer, pain in the chest, coughing up blood or mucus. Feeling weak or very tired, unexplained weight loss, chills, fever, sweating at night and having no appetite.
Dr. Bangash stated that there are two types of Tuberculosis, when TB affects the lungs, it’s called Pulmonary TB and when it is outside of the lung is called Extrapulmonary TB, Skeletal TB, or bone TB spreads to the bones from the lungs or lymph nodes, it can affect any of the bones, including spine and joints.
