As many as 6,000 people died from tuberculosis in Bangladesh last year with another 2,06,919 people diagnosed with the disease in the same period, National Tuberculosis Control Programme’s (NTCP) adviser Dr Abdul Hamid Salim said.
The information was unveiled at a media briefing yesterday in Dhaka ahead of the World Tuberculosis Day on March 24. This year’s global theme is “Unite to end Tuberculosis”.
NTCP Senior Manager Dr Kazi Al Mamun Siddique said: “Those diagnosed with TB last year had received treatment. Among them, 8,103 are children, mostly under the age of 15.”
Altogether 1,97,000 TB cases were recorded in Bangladesh in 2014.
According to the study, 227 people in every 100,000 are infected with TB every year across the globe. Forty-one percent of the patients are from South Asia.
The WHO last year ranked TB alongside HIV as the world’s most deadly infectious disease with the former accounting for 1.1 million deaths in 2014.
