March 24, 2010 is the 15th World Tuberculosis Day and this year’s theme is “On the Move against Tuberculosis, Innovate to Accelerate Action”.       
 

On Mar. 20, Beijing Municipal Health Bureau launched the starting ceremony of “2010 World Tuberculosis Day” campaign in PKU Centennial Memorial Auditorium Multi-purpose Hall. This ceremony was chaired by Xie Hui, the deputy director general of the Department of Disease Control, Beijing Board of Health. Xiao Donglou (deputy director general of the Disease Prevention and Control Bureau), Ju Chuanjin (vice president of Peking University), Zhao Tao (associate counsel of Beijing Municipal Health Bureau), Zheng E (deputy director of Beijing Education Commission), Shi Nansheng (officer of Tuberculosis Project of the World Health Organization) and other leaders from over ten organizations attended this ceremony. Besides, health bureaus from 18 districts and counties administered by Beijing, leaders of tuberculosis prevention and control organizations and volunteers from universities in Beijing were also present. Associate counsel Zhao Tao and the deputy director general Xiao Donglou gave speeches separately. Zhao Tao and Zheng E presented a flag to the representative of volunteers and presented tuberculosis prevention and control booklets to representatives of tuberculosis prevention and control organizations from the 18 districts and counties.    

Haidian District as the largest university students gathering place in Beijing is a place where 36 famous colleges and universities including Peking University and Tsinghua University are located. The tuberculosis campaign launched in colleges and universities not only provides health training to students, but also produces deeper influences and generates important promotional effects on the prevention and control of tuberculosis through propaganda by those trained students to other persons about tuberculosis’s basic knowledge. Not only that, all districts and counties under Beijing will carry out rich and diversified activities about tuberculosis prevention activities on March 24, so as to creates a better social atmosphere for patients, quell the doubts of the public, improve people’s awareness to tuberculosis prevention and control, and provide a publicizing platform for further prompting harmonious development of the society and jointly boosting the prevention and control works of tuberculosis in Beijing. 

As a chronic respiratory infectious disease, tTuberculosis as a chronic respiratory infectious disease is called the White Plague. Since the 1950s, the spread of tuberculosis is controlled to a certain extent with inventions of multiple antitubercular agents. However, the morbidity and mortality rate of tuberculosis started to rebound for a variety of reasons in recent years. According to experts, an untreated tuberculosis patient is a source of infection and may infect 15 to 20 healthy persons through the air per year. At present, there will be one new infected person in every second in the world, and 300,000,000 persons will be infected in the future 10 years if left uncontrolled. China is one of the 22 tuberculosis high-burden countries, and is next only less thanto India in terms of the number of tuberculosis patients. For the moment, the number of persons infected with tuberculosis is about 500,000,000, and the number of patients confirmed is 4,500,000 (prevalence rate is 122/100,000). The number of newly infectious patients per year is about 1,500,000 and tuberculosis kills about 130,000 people every year. In addition, the number of newly- infected tuberculosis patients with multi-drug resistance reaches 120,000. 

The tuberculosis prevention and control work in China is operated in the following way: the comprehensive medical institutions transfer tuberculosis patients, while the tuberculosis prevention and control organizations trace, diagnosis and treat such patients, and the community or village where the said patients dwell are responsible for supervising and managing them.

Beijing has made remarkable achievements in tuberculosis prevention and control in the past 60 years since the founding of the new China and it is the place with the least tuberculosis epidemics in China. The prevalence rate of tuberculosis of registration residents in Beijing is 12/100,000, and the control level of Beijing is equivalent to that of London and Paris and other megapolis of developed countries. But Beijing also faces new challenges in controlling tuberculosis, such as, floating population, multi-drug resistance tuberculosis and tubercule bacillus/AIDS double infection. etc      

For years, Beijing has made great progresses in the control and planning of tuberculosis. The coverage rate of DOTS (directly-observed treatment strategy) maintainsis still kept at 100%. The discovery rate of new smear positive tuberculosis patients reaches 97.0% and the recovery rate of the new smear positive cases is 93.4%, successfully realizing the three goals of the World Health Organization for controlling tuberculosis (100% DOTS coverage rate, 70% discovery rate of new smear positive tuberculosis patients, 85% recovery rate of new smear positive tuberculosis patients). Beijing is making active studies on the surveillance and treatment of tuberculosis epidemic situation in schools, the controlling of multi-drug resistance tuberculosis and the prevention and control of tuberculosis against floating populations etc. at present and has accumulated certain experience, especially the execution of the first multi-drug resistance tuberculosis control project supported by local public finance in China. Under this project, multi-drug resistance tuberculosis patients might be detected in time by carrying out drug susceptibility test against suspected patients, chemotherapy will be prepared based on the test result, and strict supervision and treatment measures to stop the spreading of resistance of tubercle bacillus strains to antibiotics in the crowdpopulation will be carried out, thus providing references for the control and prevention of tuberculosis throughout the whole country.   

Tuberculosis is a chronic respiratory infectious disease caused by tubercle bacillus and transmitted through the respiratory tract. It may be spread to others by droplets gushed by cough, sneezes or loud speak of the patients. Tuberculosis not only causes the patient to lose his ability to work and may also infect other person, and is of great danger to individual, family or the society. Generally speaking, the signs more than two weeks of cough, expectoration or blood streak in expectoration over two weeks may possibly means the sign of tuberculosis and need to be examined immediately.   

To ensure tuberculosis patients receive timely and regular examination and treatment, tuberculosis prevention institutions have been set up in the 18 districts and counties separately to facilitate patients with tuberculosis symptoms to hospitalize in the nearest institution, in particular that students at school, peasant workers and enterprise staff and workers may actively go to tuberculosis institutions to receive free examination and treatment.  

In the run up to the 2010 “World Tuberculosis Day”, we shall mobilize all social forces to participate in the controlling work of tuberculosis and to make joint efforts to maintain our leading position in controlling tuberculosis epidemic situation.