Call to spread awareness about fighting tuberculosis.

KARACHI -- Nearly 45 per cent of over 600,000 people who get infected with tuberculosis (TB) every year remain undiagnosed and without treatment.

This was stated by experts at an event held in connection with World TB Day at the Ojha Institute of Chest Diseases (OICD), part of the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS), on Saturday.

The day began with an awareness walk, which was attended by a large number of teachers, students and medical healthcare workers.

Later, at the seminar, speakers highlighted the challenges Pakistan faced with respect to TB, and said the country ranked fifth amongst the high burden countries in the world and had been running a TB control programme for decades.

They also talked about the growing cases of multi-drug resistant TB in Pakistan, a reflection of bad medical practices and poor disease surveillance and government neglect.

World TB Day, speakers pointed out, was a reminder of a silent killer, often described as the disease of the poor, which continued...