Mortality rate caused by tuberculosis decreases in Azerbaijan

By Azernews

By Mirsaid Ibrahimzade

The number of tuberculosis patients in Azerbaijan last year decreased by three percent compared to 2017.

As a result of involvement in the active treatment of identified patients, providing them with first-line and second-line medications, the death rate from tuberculosis decreased by 6.7 percent in 2018.

Over the past four years, 9,561 people have applied to the commission for the organization of diagnosis and treatment of viral hepatitis at the Ministry of Health. Of these, 6,622 were prescribed a long course of therapy.

Note that according to statistics of World Health Organization, more than 9 million people in the world are sick with tuberculosis during the year, and 1.8 million of them die from this disease.

The director of the Research Institute for Lung Diseases of the Ministry of Health Professor Hagigat Gadirova said that in recent years in Azerbaijan has been observed a stabilization of the incidence of tuberculosis, whereas in previous periods this figure was increasing.

She also added that in the last two years, a decrease in the rate of both primary and repeated incidence of tuberculosis has been recorded.

Stressing the importance of raising the number of laboratories for diagnosing tuberculosis in Azerbaijan, Gadirova noted that the strong support of their families is also very important in the successful treatment of patients with this disease.

Generally, according to the World Health Organization website, death rate caused by tuberculosis has decreased in the world by more than 40 percent since 2000 due to joint efforts aimed at combating this disease and within this period 54 million lives were saved.

Worldwide, World Tuberculosis Day (World Tuberculosis Day) is celebrated on March 24 to attract public attention to this dangerous lung disease.

Despite this statistics, tuberculosis is still one of the leading causes of death from infectious diseases in the world. Every day, almost 4,500 people die from it, and almost 30,000 people are infected by it.

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but can also affect other parts of the body. The classic symptoms of active TB are a chronic cough with blood-containing sputum, fever, night sweats, and weight loss. It was historically called "consumption" due to the weight loss. Infection of other organs can cause a wide range of symptoms.