Tuberculosis (TB) ranks No. 1 in the number of deaths caused by notifiable infectious diseases in Taiwan, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that it plans to launch phase one of a tuberculosis elimination project in five years.
With 11,000 tuberculosis cases and about 600 deaths associated with it reported each year in Taiwan, the centers said it is to begin funding treatment for and providing free medication to patients with multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in the first phase of its project to eliminate the disease by 2035.
The centers made the announcement at an APEC conference in Taipei on the prevention, control and care of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis and supply of second-line anti-tuberculosis drugs.
CDC Director-General Steve Kuo (郭旭崧) said that since last year, when the nation began a 10-year project to reduce tuberculosis cases by half, the number of reported cases have fallen by 6 percent each year, while the number of MDR-TB patients whose symptoms have been brought under control dropped from 440 in 2007 to 184 last year.
The success rate of MDR-TB treatments reached 77 percent — higher than the global average — while only 0.8 percent of tuberculosis cases reported last year were MDR-TB, he said, adding that the centers would continue to employ active prevention measures, as well as introduce effective second-line drugs against the disease.
CDC physician Chan Pei-chun (詹珮君) said that about 10 percent of MDR-TB cases reported in Taiwan each year are imported from other countries, presenting a challenge to the nation’s disease prevention efforts.
Chan said that tuberculosis is a curable disease and the course of treatment for MDR-TB can be shortened from two years to about nine months, which might encourage more people to seek treatment.
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Almost a quarter of volunteer soldiers who signed up from 2021 to last year have sought early discharge, the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center said in a report. The report said that 12,884 of 52,674 people who volunteered in the period had sought an early exit from the military, returning NT$895.96 million (US$28.86 million) to the government. In 2021, there was a 105.34 percent rise in the volunteer recruitment rate, but the number has steadily declined since then, missing recruitment targets, the Chinese-language United Daily News said, citing the report. In 2021, only 521 volunteers dropped out of the military, the report said, citing
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