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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Serbia makes major progress in fight against tuberculosis

Belgrade, 24 March 2008

Serbian Minister of Health Tomica Milosavljevic said today that his ministry plans to lower the tuberculosis incidence rate in Serbia during the upcoming years and reduce the number of new cases to the level in developed EU countries.

Author: Tanjug

Speaking at a press conference held to mark World TB Day, Milosavljevic said that in 2003 the incidence rate was 37 per 100,000 people and in 2006 Serbia showed major progress as the rate dropped to 29 per 100,000.

He recalled that in 2004 the Health Ministry started the project “Controlling Tuberculosis in Serbia”, financed with assistance worth $4 million provided by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

According to Milosavljevic, the number of new cases per 100,000 in Serbia is less than in Romania and Bulgaria, who are EU members.

Deputy head of the office of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Serbia Melita Vujnovic stressed that according to a 2006 WHO report, 9.2 million people in the world contracted tuberculosis and 1.7 million died of the disease.

Vujnovic specified that in Europe the number of patients was nearly 450,000, of which 81,600 belonged to EU countries, and the rest to non-EU countries.

According to WHO statistics, based on the 2006 average, 49 persons are diagnosed with tuberculosis per hour in the world, while seven people die of the disease per hour.

The Health Ministry has set aside RSD 30 million from its 2008 budget to reconstruct the pulmonary ward in the Serbian Clinical Centre. In 2007 the ministry provided RSD 10 million to reconstruct the pulmonary ward in the Ozren Specialist Hospital near Sokobanja.

Serbia is among the countries with a medium incidence rate. Serbia has a well organised health system as far as tuberculosis is concerned, with adequate and well trained human resources.