On March 17, Pakistan was honored with an award from the United States, naming the country the most successful in fighting multi-drug resistance tuberculosis (MDR-TB).

The award is significant for Pakistan, the fifth country most highly burdened by TB and the fourth most by MDR-TB, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Although 9.6 million people globally become sick with TB each year and the number in Pakistan was 298,981 in 2013, the percentage of successful treatments has also continued to increase.

In 2001, Pakistan declared TB a national health crisis, putting the country in a state of emergency. In collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the National TB Control Program (NTP), Pakistan set objectives to facilitate improved treatments and lower incidence rates. NTP vowed to increase the number of notified TB cases, while still maintaining treatment success rate at 91 percent, and to reduce, by at least five percent per year, the prevalence of MDR-TB among TB patients who have never received any TB treatment.

The connection between poverty and TB incidence cannot be overlooked. Ninety-five percent of new TB cases and 98 percent of TB related deaths annually occur in the developing world. In Pakistan, 75 percent of TB cases fall among young people, aged 15-45, in the country’s poorest regions, according to the “TB Patients’ Declaration on TB,” a document signed at the First TB Patient Symposium in October 2014.

Since its pledge, the NTP has successfully treated more than 1.5 million TB cases, free of cost. Strategies for fighting eradication of poverty and the disease, and to minimize economic restraints on the country, have been vital to the movement’s success.

Dr Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank, spoke on behalf of the organization in Washington, emphasizing the need for treatment among patients categorized as low economic priority. “I am yet to meet a patient who says, please do not treat me because I am a low priority patient,” he noted.

Other presenters at the ceremony, including Ambassador Jalil Abbas Jilani, winner of the TB Champion Award, and Dr. Ejaz Qadeer, the national manager for the TB Control Programme, emphasized the growing need for not only cost-efficient treatment, but also early detection mechanisms, so as to prevent the virus from transferring from patients in crowded areas. As the country with the highest MDR-TB success rate, Pakistan plans to achieve 80 percent detection by 2020.

Between 1990 and 2015, the TB death rate has dropped 47 percent, according to WHO. With leaders like Pakistan, the rest of the world could hope for a global end of the disease.

– Nora Harless

Sources: Dawn News, The Express Tribune, National TB Control Program, Target Tuberculosis, World Health Organization
Photo: Flickr