Tuberculosis (TB) bacteria infect more than 3 million people and around 70,000 people die from the disease every year in Bangladesh, local newspaper Daily Star reported Saturday.

Bangladesh stands at the fifth position among 22 high TB prevalence countries in the world while it ranks forth among five leading TB-prone countries in south and east Asia, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

WHO consultant Khurshid Alam Hyder told a seminar marking the World TB Day here Friday that one-third of the world population has been infected by TB bacteria, and TB infects 8 million people and claims 2 million lives every year worldwide.

The speakers at the seminar stressed the need for increasing mass awareness program through media campaign on TB as well as accelerating social participation in controlling TB.

They also stressed the need for disseminating the information that TB is a fully curable disease as people are still scared of it.

Source: Xinhua