Indian-UK Parliamentarians commit to work for checking TB

New Delhi, Mar 27 (UNI) Indian Medical Parliamentarian Forum and British Parliamentarians today committed to work for checking Tuberculosis which claims nearly two million lives every year globally and about 360,000 in India alone.

Addressing reporters here after an 'Inter-Parliamentary Symposium on Health Challenges' Mr Nick Herbert MP and Co-Chair of the UK All Parliamentary Party Group on TB and Dr M Jagannath, Chairman of the Indian Medical Parliamentarians' Forum, said that parliamentarians from UK and India would would work to increase political commitment to fight the disease so as to save the lives of 14 million people in the next ten years.

Dr Jagannath also announced to launch a Parliamentary Caucus to fight Tuberculosis which would help to fight the disease of which India has the largest burden with 1.6 million new cases being detected every year in the country.

The Parliamentarians also gave a Call to Stop Tuberculosis which states ''We call on world leaders, governments, organisations, civil society, corporations and individuals to endorse, fully fund and implement the Global Plan to Stop TB-2006-2015.' ''TB is an international killer and knows no boundary and the most unfortunate fact is despite it being a curable disease about 1.5 million people die of tuberculosis every year and one thousand people die in India every day of TB,'' Mr Herbert said.

He said that as per the Global Plan, 14 million lives could be saved over the next ten years by preventing TB and stepping up the fight against TB. He said the United Kingdom wanted to forge a partnership with India to increase collaboration to fight the disease.

Pointing out that no major single new TB drug has been invented since the early 1960s, he said that developing a vaccine against the disease was a major challenge as it could reduce the disease burden.

Moreover, emergence of drug resistant TB and HIV-TB association was also a major cause concern globally, he said.

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