KUALA LUMPUR: Foreigners only contribute 10 to 12 per cent of tuberculosis (TB) cases, yearly.
Institute of Respiratory Medicine director Dr Nurhayati Marzuki said this was based on statistics over the past decade.
“Contrary to popular belief, it is a myth that foreigners are the ones causing TB outbreaks. The stats show Malaysians are the largest number of those diagnosed with TB,” she told the New Straits Times after the institute’s commemoration of World TB Day.
Dr Nurhayati said such myths were fuelled by misconceptions that the bacterial infection is a poor man’s disease or a condition that is associated with rural folk.
To make matters worse, the nature of active TB is often dismissed as common cough or cold by patients due to its flu-like symptoms.
“There are cases where it’s only found out that a patient has TB during post-mortem examination, or when it’s too late and their lungs are too damaged that nothing can be done for the patients,” added Dr Nurhayati.
She said this was the real danger of the disease, as it leads to an overall underreporting of cases.
“From our findings, 15 per cent of TB cases slip under our notice as patients do not come forward. This is based on the World Health Organisation’s projection that there three million people with TB worldwide that are not diagnosed,” said Dr Hayati.
She also said that there were dormant TB carriers who can carry the disease all their lives but can go about their lives as they are not active transmitters.
“However, when their immunity is suppressed, they can become active TB transmitters and do so to anyone they come in contact with.
“There is a 10 per cent chance of this happening to them throughout their lives, but if they are HIV positive this likelihood is 10 per cent to 12 per cent yearly.
“Hence under the National TB Control Programme all HIV patients who have been excluded from having active TB have to go on preventive TB treatment.”
Dr Nurhayati said one of the factors why people do not seek treatment on time is because they fear that they would not be able to work.
“This is the case especially for those doing daily work such as cabs drivers and the like, for instance. There are also those who do not want to be on long medical leave as they are afraid this will cause them to be dismissed. There is also the stigma itself as the disease is often associated with HIV patients.”
Dr Nurhayati said, however, that there were means to help the patients by seeking aid from the Malaysian Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis as well as the Social Security Organisation (Socso).
A total of 26,168 TB cases and 2,098 deaths related to its complications were recorded in 2017. Of these cases, a total of 370 cases were also multi-drug resistant.