World TB Day 2002 - In the News

The Chinese government kicked off a large-scale project Sunday to speed up its tuberculosis (TB) prevention and control effort, the English-Language newspaper China Daily reports Monday.

A new addition to China's National TB Control Program, the project will consume a World Bank loan of 104 million U.S. dollars by the time it is completed in 2009, the paper said.

The project is expected to cover a population of 680 million and to uncover and treat about 2 million infectious TB patients, said Wang Longde, vice-minister of Health.

Wang made the remarks Sunday at a signing ceremony for World TB Day, jointly held by the ministries of Finance and Health, the World Bank and the U.K. Department for International Development ( DFID).

The DFID has played a key role in this new project by providing a grant of 37 million U.S. dollars to the Chinese government to lower the interest rate on the bank's 20-year loan, which carries a grace period of eight years, according to the paper.

TB is the leading cause of death through infection in China, with about 5 million infected people and 130,000 TB deaths each year.

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