A group of Saudi youth is preparing to participate in the international Stop Tuberculosis (STB) Day on 24 March by conducting an awareness campaign here from March 1. “The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced their plans to conduct a Stop TB (STB) awareness campaign for 2009, which will take place during March. The STB group in Jeddah would like to support their efforts by helping to educate our community about TB. The program focuses on enlarging the role of youth in activities which will organized in Jeddah this year. The theme of this year's campaign is “One million march on World TB Day 2009,” said Mohammed Bakhrieba the organizer of the campaign. Bakhrieba, the marketing manager of Serafi Mega Mall, which is the official partner of the Eastern Mediterranean Partnership (EMRO) of the World Health Organization (WHO), told Saudi Gazette that they are preparing different activities for the STB campaign. Participants in the campaign will visit hospitals, schools, universities, malls and health clubs to make people aware of the disease. An STB comic book for children will be launched; events will be held to inform the public of treatment programs in the Kingdom, and presentations and documentary reports will be put on plasma screens in malls. The Saudi doctor and artist Dr. Abdul Hameed Saban of Umm Al Qura medical center and some young Saudi artists are helping in the preparation of a comic book that will raise awareness of the disease through art, said Bakhrieba. “Our target is 10,000 students of the King Abdul Aziz and Umm Al Qura medical colleges to participate in the awareness campaign with the help of the Ministry of Health,” he said. “We think this is the right time to educate people about the fact that there is a new generation of TB which in 20 years will present us with the problem of bacteria which are hard to treat or cure,” he said. “In the last decade, victims of TB have died in 7 days. But in the new generation of the disease, victims will die in only 72 hours. This is something that we want people to be aware of. It is a big responsibility,” he explained. Children born in the region in this millennium will hopefully witness the elimination of tuberculosis in their lifetime. “Every year almost two million people around the world die from TB, and according to WHO reports, last year more than 4,500 people contracted the disease in Saudi Arabia,” said Bakhrieba. Dr. Nabeel Nouran and Dr. Khalid Radwan, medical interns of the King Abdul Aziz Hospital, are medical participants in the STB campaign. “We believe that our health is the most precious thing we have. We must do all that we can to preserve it,” said Dr. Nouran. “Tuberculosis is a disease transmitted through the air by breathing, or shaking hands; by direct or indirect contact with the patient,” he said. “TB is a preventable and curable disease which continues to affect millions of lives in the world and in our region. Ninety-five percent of people do not know they are carrying the disease, so the main aim of our campaign is to make them aware ,” said Dr. Khalid Radwan. “In the primary stage, the symptoms are such that you cannot tell that you are suffering from TB. Many people do not know about the disease and its symptoms, and they do not visit clinics, so through this campaign we will raise awareness amongst our community about the right way to treat TB,” he explained.
