ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 26 (UPI) -- Pakistan's National Tuberculosis Control Program said the country has the sixth highest tuberculosis rate in the world.
Poverty is one of the main reasons for the disease, which has been eradicated in several developed countries. About one third of Pakistan's 150 million people still live below the poverty line.
The National Tuberculosis Control Program said as many as 250,000 new cases of the disease are documented every year in Pakistan.
"No one in our times should die of tuberculosis. No child should see the life of a mother or father destroyed by a disease that is completely curable," said Pakistan's Health Minister Muhammad Nasir Khan.
He called for continued efforts to meet global targets for tuberculosis control and urged health workers to work hard to reduce tuberculosis by half by 2015, a goal set by the U.N. millennium development program.
