Daijiworld Media Network—Mangalore (RD/CN)
Mangalore, Mar 23: Kasturba Medical College (KMC) Hospital, Attavar, will be conducting a week-long free tuberculosis (TB) screening camp with free consultation and sputum examination from Tuesday March 24 to Tuesday March 31 between 9.00 am to 4.00 pm on the hospital premises for adults and children suffering from cough for more than two weeks.
The free screening camp is being organized on the occasion of World TB day on Tuesday. KMC Hospital aims to build public awareness and mobilize resources to completely eliminate TB. India accounts for 30 percent of the total TB positive cases in the world. Every second a person is infected with the TB bacilli. Like the common cold, it spreads through air and only people who are sick with TB in their lungs are infectious.
When infectious people cough, sneeze, talk, or spit, they propel TB germs, known as bacilli, into the air. A person needs only to inhale a small number of these to be infected. But people infected with TB bacilli will not necessarily become sick with the disease. The immune system ‘walls off’ the TB bacilli which, protected by a thick waxy coat, can lie dormant for years. When someone's immune system is weakened, the chances of becoming sick are greater.
Once a person is diagnosed as a positive tuberculosis case by their sputum examination, he/she can undergo treatment in any of the directly observed treatment (DOTS) centres. DOTS, short course programmmes, are a government initiative and it aims to eradicate TB and to prevent TB negative cases from turning into TB positive cases. DOTS centre is available at the KMC Hospital Attavar, here with free medications for all TB positive cases.
With the development of strains of multiple drug resistant bacteria, there is a small chance of developing active TB again after complete medication. Enough sleep, exercise, and a healthy diet helps keep up good health and build resistance to the tuberculosis bacteria.
Attavar KMC Hospital medical superintendent Dr Sunil Deshpande has urged the public to make maximum possible use of this camp.