MANILA, March 22 (Xinhuanet) -- The World Health Organization (WHO)Western Pacific Regional Office said on Tuesday that one million people with tuberculosis (TB) go unnoticed in East Asia and the Pacific every year, thus missing the chance to be cured.

    "Without treatment, about one third of these undetected cases will continue to infect up to 15 people each, fueling the spread of the TB epidemic," the WHO said in a news release.

    It said that undetected cases account for half of the estimated two million people who develop TB every year in countries covered by WHO's Western Pacific Region.

    "It's tragic that so many people suffer silently with TB when there is, in fact, a cure that works," said WHO's Regional Director for the Western Pacific, Dr Shigeru Omi,

    Speaking in the run-up to the "World Stop TB Day" on March 24, with the theme of "Find TB, Cure TB" this year, Omi said that TB devastates the poor people, make its sufferers "waste away slowly,suffer financial ruin and maybe infect family members".

    According to WHO, TB kills four people worldwide every minute. In Asia, it causes more deaths than all other infectious diseases,including AIDS.

    The WHO also said that drug-resistant TB viruses, which are more difficult to treat, are on infecting more and more people in the region.

    "The failure to detect, and thus treat, TB cases is linked to many factors, but the main causes are poor awareness of the disease among the public, limited access to and delivery of health-care services and the low quality of laboratory services," said WHO.

    Most critical to detecting cases is the availability of the DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short Course) strategy. DOTS, the internationally recommended strategy for controlling TB, calls for early detection of people with TB symptoms and the constant monitoring of treatment. DOTS is free, highly effective and widely available.

    Staff working on TB control in the Western Pacific Region are aiming to improve case detection rates this year in order to meet targets agreed internationally for TB control.

    The WHO has set targets for 2005 as 100 percent access to DOTS,detection of 70 percent of all cases, curing at least 85 percent of cases detected.

    The organization said DOTS coverage in the Western Pacific Region reached 90 percent in 2003, while the 85 percent target forthe treatment success rate has already been met.

    However, the case detection rate, at 52 percent in 2003, is short of the target, and greater effort will be needed in this area, said WHO. Enditem