China warns against complacency about tuberculosis

BEIJING, Dec 19 (Reuters) - China is not doing enough to fight tuberculosis and should not rest on its laurels with successes achieved to date, the health minister warned in an official newspaper on Wednesday.

Tuberculosis is China's deadliest infectious disease, killing more than 200,000 people alone in 2004, according to the World Health Organisation. The country also has a growing problem with cases of drug-resistant forms of the disease.

"Although our tuberculosis prevention campaign has had some initial success, which has been widely recognised by international society, we must clearly recognise that the epidemic has not substantially improved," Health Minister Chen Zhu was quoted as saying by the ministry-run Health News.

"At the same time, we face many new challenges and opportunities. We cannot be sluggish in our prevention work, and have to step up efforts. The pressure on prevention work is enormous."

The government had to improve training for health professionals, step up surveillance and ensure there was enough investment in prevention, he said.

Tuberculosis infects about a third of the world's population. Most cases are latent, meaning people have no symptoms and are not infectious to others.

But the infection can become active when people's immune systems are suppressed -- most notably by the AIDS virus, but also by malnutrition, cancer or other diseases.

Last week, a new World Bank report warned that Asia faced billions of dollars in costs if it did not pay more attention to fighting tuberculosis, with China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam and Indonesia seen as among the worst affected countries. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie and Sanjeev Miglani)