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Until now, Tuberculosis (TB) remains a serious concern. Although not classified as a new disease, but in fact the disease is difficult to remove. Why is that?

“Until now there has been no single country in the category eradication (no case at all, or zero) for tuberculosis disease,” said Director General of Disease Control and Environmental Health (Pengendalian Penyakit dan Penyehatan Lingkungan / P2PL) The Indonesian Ministry of Health, Prof. Dr. Tjandra Yoga Aditama SpP(K), MARS, DTM&H, DTCE, in a media gathering on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for tuberculosis in Ministry of Health Building, Jakarta, Friday (12/17/2010).

Prof. Tjandra said that the cause of tuberculosis is difficult to be removed because of tuberculosis there are two stages, the first infected but not ill. Second infected and fall ill. Currently there are about 2 billion people in the world who are in the contracting phase but not sick.

“As long as the infected are still there, the possibility of tuberculosis still exists and can not be eliminated. Because of all this is someone who treated infected and had been sick,” he said.

However currently in particular the MDGs for tuberculosis has been virtually achieved. This is based on data in 1990 the prevalence of (new and old cases of tuberculosis) as much as 443 with the MDGs by 2015 approximately 222 cases, whereas until 2007 the prevalence of 244 or close.

For the case of death (mortaliti) in 1990 as many as 92 with the MDGs in 2015 by 46, whereas by the year 2007 the number of tuberculosis deaths by 39. This indicates that cases of tuberculosis deaths already achieve the MDGs.

In addition, based on data from the Global Tuberculosis Control in 2009 found that Indonesia currently ranks the 5th of the 22 highest tuberculosis burden countries, Indonesia ranks prior to 3 from 22 countries.

But that does not mean that Indonesia is safe from the threat of tuberculosis, because there are still major challenges to eradicate this tuberculosis. Tuberculosis problem in Indonesia is the TB-HIV prevalence was estimated at 3 percent, and MDR TB (multi drug resistant tuberculosis), which is estimated there are about 6,395 new cases of cases per year.

“MDR is due to human error, such as irregular in taking medications. So prevention is a well-run DOTS program so that people taking the drug regularly. Until now, treatment of tuberculosis worldwide is still 6 months and no vaccine,” added Prof. Tjandra .

Prof. Tjandra add a tuberculosis drug that is currently used as quinolones are also given for other diseases such as H1N1, so if people are exposed to tuberculosis possibility he had become resistant to the drug.

One way to tackle tuberculosis is to use the DOTS strategy (Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse) which consists of five components, that is: