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Christian agency launches campaign to tackle world’s biggest killer
-08/02/06
Christian aid agency Tearfund is appealing for money and support as it launches a campaign to tackle tuberculosis that claims the lives of three people every minute, despite being a preventable and curable disease.
Nine million people contract tuberculosis (TB) every year, claiming 1.7 million lives annually. In addition, one third of all Aids-related deaths are caused by TB. Taken together, this makes TB the world’s biggest killer, ahead of Aids, killing 2.7 million people every year.
“Many people assume TB died out with their grandparents generation but instead it’s infected, spread and destroyed, earning its place as the world’s most deadly infectious disease,” says Tearfund’s Steve Adams.
TB and the work of the Diocese of Hyderabad TB Control Centre are highlighted in Tearfund’s new church resources – Killer TB – a comprehensive package of materials for churches of all shapes and sizes to raise awareness and funds to tackle the disease.
Imrose, Chief Paramedic for the Diocese of Hyderabad TB Control Centre, a Tearfund partner in southeast Pakistan, says “At least three patients die each month because they took drugs from a private doctor and don’t have the money to finish the course. Private treatment is very expensive and patients often cannot afford eight months’ worth.”
According to the World Health Organisation, the TB situation in Pakistan is one of the worst in the world. Every two minutes a person contracts TB. Every eight minutes it claims someone’s life.
Featured in Killer TB, Kheair, 60, lost two of his children to the disease and his business in the process, selling all the stock from his small shop to pay for medicines. “We didn’t know how TB is caught or how to deal with it. When they were ill we went to hospital and spent a lot of money on treatment,” he says.
Unable to pay for the full 8-month course of drugs, the disease developed into a resistant strain, infecting two more of his children, his daughter Sangita, 18 and son Santosh, 24.
Lacking money for further treatment, Kheair heard about the free treatment and support provided by the Diocese of Hyderabad TB Control Centre. Santosh is responding well to treatment, but after three courses of unsuccessful treatment, Sangita has since died.
The overwhelming impact of TB is in poor countries, home to 95 per cent of new TB cases and 98 per cent of TB deaths. Future predictions are gloomy, with fears that in the next 15 years, 200 million people will contact the disease and 70 million will die.
“The problem is that while wiping it out in our own backyard, we left it to run riot in some of the world’s poorest countries. We shut the gate and forgot the millions behind it, dying, with no money for a cure,” says Steve Adams.
TB can be stopped. A simple eight-month course of drugs will drive it from the human body. But although many patients begin the treatment, poverty often prevents them from completing it, and there develop a potentially untreatable strain of the disease.
Despite being almost wiped out in the UK by the 1980s, today TB is back and spreading, infecting 7,000 people in the UK each year.
Killer TB includes materials for all-age services, cell or small groups, creative and ’emerging’ church groups, young people and children; worship tracks by Delirious?, Jack Ellis and Andy Flannagan; ready to use material for ten minute, 20-minute and full-services; as well as compelling photography, drama, quiz, posters, CD-Rom, OHP images and much more.
Related Searches(UK visitors only)
Christian agency launches campaign to tackle world’s biggest killer
-08/02/06
Christian aid agency Tearfund is appealing for money and support as it launches a campaign to tackle tuberculosis that claims the lives of three people every minute, despite being a preventable and curable disease.
Nine million people contract tuberculosis (TB) every year, claiming 1.7 million lives annually. In addition, one third of all Aids-related deaths are caused by TB. Taken together, this makes TB the world’s biggest killer, ahead of Aids, killing 2.7 million people every year.
“Many people assume TB died out with their grandparents generation but instead it’s infected, spread and destroyed, earning its place as the world’s most deadly infectious disease,” says Tearfund’s Steve Adams.
TB and the work of the Diocese of Hyderabad TB Control Centre are highlighted in Tearfund’s new church resources – Killer TB – a comprehensive package of materials for churches of all shapes and sizes to raise awareness and funds to tackle the disease.
Imrose, Chief Paramedic for the Diocese of Hyderabad TB Control Centre, a Tearfund partner in southeast Pakistan, says “At least three patients die each month because they took drugs from a private doctor and don’t have the money to finish the course. Private treatment is very expensive and patients often cannot afford eight months’ worth.”
According to the World Health Organisation, the TB situation in Pakistan is one of the worst in the world. Every two minutes a person contracts TB. Every eight minutes it claims someone’s life.
Featured in Killer TB, Kheair, 60, lost two of his children to the disease and his business in the process, selling all the stock from his small shop to pay for medicines. “We didn’t know how TB is caught or how to deal with it. When they were ill we went to hospital and spent a lot of money on treatment,” he says.
Unable to pay for the full 8-month course of drugs, the disease developed into a resistant strain, infecting two more of his children, his daughter Sangita, 18 and son Santosh, 24.
Lacking money for further treatment, Kheair heard about the free treatment and support provided by the Diocese of Hyderabad TB Control Centre. Santosh is responding well to treatment, but after three courses of unsuccessful treatment, Sangita has since died.
The overwhelming impact of TB is in poor countries, home to 95 per cent of new TB cases and 98 per cent of TB deaths. Future predictions are gloomy, with fears that in the next 15 years, 200 million people will contact the disease and 70 million will die.
“The problem is that while wiping it out in our own backyard, we left it to run riot in some of the world’s poorest countries. We shut the gate and forgot the millions behind it, dying, with no money for a cure,” says Steve Adams.
TB can be stopped. A simple eight-month course of drugs will drive it from the human body. But although many patients begin the treatment, poverty often prevents them from completing it, and there develop a potentially untreatable strain of the disease.
Despite being almost wiped out in the UK by the 1980s, today TB is back and spreading, infecting 7,000 people in the UK each year.
Killer TB includes materials for all-age services, cell or small groups, creative and ’emerging’ church groups, young people and children; worship tracks by Delirious?, Jack Ellis and Andy Flannagan; ready to use material for ten minute, 20-minute and full-services; as well as compelling photography, drama, quiz, posters, CD-Rom, OHP images and much more.