Moldova is continuously fighting the tuberculosis, although now a decrease of incidence is being recorded. Despite all the activities undertaken and the results obtained, the epidemiological situation is far from the indices aspired to by physicians, specialists from the Health Ministry told a news conference on Monday, March 24, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to statistics, 4,759 TB patients were recorded in January 2008 in Moldova, of which, 3,545 were new cases discovered in 2007. In 2006 4,602 new cases were registered. As for the children under 17, 251 cases of tuberculosis were recorded in 2007, compared with 261 a year earlier. The head of the World Health Organization Office to R. Moldova, Pavel Ursu, has said 49 people catch the disease in Europe every hour, and other 7 people die because of this malady, as only 32 get cured. The TB issue overpasses the frontiers of a single state, as the transmission capacity of the disease is very large, and the single opportunity to combat it is to join efforts and promote a campaign of treating the infected people and of informing whole society. According to the Health Minister in office, Ion Ababii, the opportunities of detecting the TB cases, including at an early stage, have significantly increased in Moldova. So, the sick can begin the treatment when the disease has not yet affected the body seriously and can be cured easier. The sick are granted free medicines, paid from the state budget, or from grants of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The state expends about 12,000 lei yearly to treat a person suffering from primary TB, while for the cases of multi-resistant tuberculosis, it spends about 35,000 lei. Starting from 2006, treating patients with multi-resistant TB has been operated in the country, after the World Health Organization (WHO) accepted Moldova’s appeal to get, at low price, the medications for this category of sick. Also with the support of international organisms, the laboratory system has been fortified in Moldova, specialists have been trained, including family doctors to better the early detection of the malady. The World Tuberculosis Day is marked yearly on March 24. This year's theme is “I AM STOPPING TB”.