Free treatment will be available to people who have drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis and to those who have not recovered from the disease after previously receiving treatment in Shanghai, local authorities have revealed.

The policy will initially be carried out among local residents, starting this year. It will then expand to include migrant workers, who account for more than 80 percent of the city's 8,000 new cases of TB each year, said Zhang Zhongshun, a TB specialist at the Shanghai Pulmonary Disease Hospital.

Zhang announced the information at a conference held by the Shanghai Pulmonary Medicine Association and the Shanghai Pulmonary Disease Hospital over the weekend to mark the World Tuberculosis Day, which falls on Wednesday.

As one of the oldest known diseases, tuberculosis not only harms the lungs, but can also affect the brain and kidneys. An airborne disease, TB primarily afflicts the poor in developing countries, such as China and India.

"The government has made great strides in treating the disease over the past few years," Zhang said.

In addition to free screening for local residents and immigrant workers, local authorities have also provided for patients who were first diagnosed with TB or who did not recover after receiving their initial treatment and need further treatment, according to Zhang.

"Even so, there are still a large number of patients who do not recover after being treated twice. They face grave danger," he said. "Research shows that 70 percent of them are drug-resistant, 10 percent are multidrug-resistant."

Earlier reports said the country has 112,000 drug-resistant TB cases, ranking second in the world.

"It is very likely to develop drug-resistant or multidrug-resistant tuberculosis when patients fail to follow the full treatment regimens or stop their treatment too early," said Xiao Heping, another TB expert. "And such disease (drug-resistant TB) will spread to others, which increases the treatment cost and the chances of not recovering."

According to health authorities, China has about 5 million TB patients and each year 1.5 million people contract the disease. Regular TB generally costs 1,000 to 2,000 yuan to treat, while drug-resistant TB costs at least 60,000 yuan.

Health experts who gathered at the conference also called for more financial support to develop better diagnostic techniques and drugs for the treatment of tuberculosis.

(China Daily March 24, 2010)