Azernews.Az

The World Health Organization (WHO) has removed Azerbaijan from the list of 22 countries with a high rate of tuberculosis infection.

A new WHO report says the relative growth of tuberculosis resistant to treatment has decreased in the country in comparison with past years to 22 percent. At times medicine does not produce the desired result, and 56 percent of patients have to undergo treatment again, it said.

According to the report, there were 1,700 carriers of drug resistant tuberculosis in Azerbaijan in 2010. Allocations of state funds to fight the TB spread have increased.

Worldwide, the number of people who contracted tuberculosis and died from the disease has decreased for the first time in the past 10 years. Whereas 1.8 million were killed by TB in 2003, the figure was 1.4 million in 2010, WHO said.

The most aggravating situation with the TB spread is in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Kenya and Thailand, the report said.

In its annual report released earlier, WHO said the new type of tuberculosis that is resistant to medicine and treatment is spreading in Azerbaijan and other former Soviet republics, and cannot be immediately diagnosed in some of the countries.

Ogtay Gozalov of WHO’s Regional Office for Europe said earlier that tuberculosis spreads not only among immigrants and inmates, who are considered the riskiest groups of population, but also other groups, and requires urgent action.

WHO has developed a $5 billion plan of activities to counter the spread of the disease, which it said was "an alarming trend".