Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadillah Soepari said that Indonesia was the third biggest country in the world with tuberculosis sufferers, ANTARA reported. The minister said that there were no less than 500,000 new tuberculosis sufferers were found every year in Indonesia. "Of the new tuberculosis patients, some 300 died," the health minister said in her written address here on Monday. The minister's written address was read out by I Nyoman Kandun, director general for disease control and sanitation affairs at the Krobokan correctional institute on the occasion of the Tuberculosis Day anniversary. Minister Soepari said that the first biggest country with 815,000 new tuberculosis sufferers every year was India, followed by China with 595,000 new sufferers. On the global scale, the number of new tuberculosis patients was recorded at 9.2 million in 2006, of whom 1.7 million died, the minister said. This meant, she said, 25 died of every 100 patients, including those of HIV carriers. Soepari said that of the 500,000 new cases in Indonesia almost all were communicable and the disease spread to almost all regions in the country. "The spread of tuberculosis disease almost spares no region in Indonesia," the minister said.
