Focus: Fighting TB in Papua New Guinea - Lot more action needed to end TB
Channel: CNS
Date: 2015-09-03

The fight against TB in Papua New Guinea is difficult at best. PNG has over 800 languages, overcrowded households, environmental issues, a setting where 26% of new TB patients are children, culture-drug-susceptibility testing does not exist in entire country yet, 10 provinces are high burden for TB and HIV co-infection, 4 provinces are high burden for MDR-TB, and most importantly, a country with increasing defaulter rates and decreasing treatment success rates... and a range of other related challenges - make it clear: lot more action needs to happen to ensure PNG progresses forward on the path to end TB.

CNS spoke with Dr Paison Dakulala, Deputy Secretary, Department of Health, Papua New Guinea, at the 5th Asia Pacific Region Conference on Lung Health in Sydney, Australia.

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Focus, is a CNS video series on current global health and development priorities. This is episode 8.

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