The Chinese government is to allocate 378 million yuan (US$47.25 million) for control of tuberculosis (TB) this year, Vice Finance Minister Wang Jun said Thursday.

The government had spent 730 million yuan (US$91.25 million) on TB control in the past five years, while local governments have spent 1.3 billion yuan (US$162.5 million).

This year's expenditure represented a rise of 25.4 percent over last year, Wang told a national tele-conference on TB prevention and control.

The fund would be used to provide free drugs to TB patients throughout the country, conduct epidemiological research and improve the epidemic reporting network, he said.

The central government would also budget 45 million yuan (US$5.6 million) to purchase drugs on behalf of international aid agencies for regional projects.

The country has about five million TB patients, 80 percent of whom live in the countryside, according to figures from the Ministry of Health.

By the end of 2005, the detection rate of new TB cases had reached 79 percent and the recovery rate 91 percent, a significant rise from previous years, said Vice Health Minister Wang Longde.

A total of 2.05 million lung tuberculosis (TB) patients were offered free treatment in the past five years, he said.

However, the epidemic situation in China remained grave in terms of its high incidence and death rates, more cases of drug resistance, more cases of double infections of TB and HIV/AIDS and poor management of the migrant population, Wang Longde noted.

TB has been the main fatal infectious disease in China in official epidemic reports. In the first quarter of this year, 887 people died of TB, accounting for 43.4 percent of the total deaths from infectious diseases. Last month, 160 died of TB, 27 percent of the death toll.

In the next five years, the government intended to identify and treat 2 million infectious lung TB patients, according to the Ministry of Health.

Tuberculosis is a chronic disease that can spread by airborne particles emitted by coughing, sneezing or talking. Nine million new TB cases and nearly 2 million TB deaths are reported annually worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

China is one of the 22 countries with a high incidence of TB with the total cases ranking second in the world after India.

Projects launched by the World Bank, the Global Fund, the World Health Organization and other international organizations have assisted China with 570 million yuan (US$71.25 million) in the past five years in TB control.

(Xinhua News Agency June 16, 2006)