2,000 new TB cases diagnosed last year

• Clivebenss

  24 Mar 11, 11:28

  Mar 24, 2011 - Straits Times

  Some 1,500 new cases a year detected among Singaporeans and PRs since mid-1980s

  By Salma Khalik, Health Correspondent

  
  

  UBERCULOSIS (TB) is an illness associated with poor nutrition and living in crowded, unsanitary environments. Such conditions are hardly widespread here, but yet, the illness is still around.

  The fight against it has hit a plateau, however: Roughly 1,500 new cases have been diagnosed each year for the last 21/2 decades among Singaporeans and permanent residents.

  Last year, 1,478 new cases cropped up among these two groups, 36 more than the year before.

  Foreigners studying or working here added 550 cases last year, up from 524 in 2009.

  Healthy people are unlikely to catch it from casual contact, but make no mistake about it - the illness can spread if one is exposed to it daily.

  So if an individual comes down with it, his family members are most at risk. In one family here, for instance, seven of its 13 members have the disease, which spreads through droplets expelled when a TB patient talks, coughs or sneezes. Symptoms include prolonged cough, fever, night sweats, unexplained loss of weight and appetite, and tiredness.

• Coca cola man

  24 Mar 11, 14:11

  eeeeeeeeeeeks.......isnt tb....a disease that needs the lungs to be removed cuz its destroyed!!!

• likeyou

  24 Mar 11, 14:20

  So how to ensure we are free from tb?

  Eg...ensure house is clean? Wear clean cloths, wash hand when having meal?

  Any one?

• Clivebenss

  24 Mar 11, 23:11

  Mass import of FTs from highly infected countries like PRC and India sure tb cases will rise.

  In old days all the immigrants are quarantine at St Johns Island for 2 weeks before they can come ashore Sg.

  

   

• theWEIRDme

  24 Mar 11, 23:16

  gg.com.sg
  
  no vaccine?

• Clivebenss

  25 Mar 11, 04:08

  many tb strains are now resistant to drugs.