Hanoi (VNA)- The national committee for tuberculosis prevention and control has beenlaunched with Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam being its chairman.

Deputy Minister ofHealth Nguyen Truong Son and Vice President of the Vietnam Fatherland FrontCentral Committee Truong Thi Ngoc Anh were assigned as deputy chairpersons ofthe committee.

Members of the committeeinclude leaders and officials of different ministries and organisations such asthe Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, the Ministry of ForeignAffairs and the Red Cross Society.

The committee’s duty isto help PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc to give guidance to concerned organisations intuberculosis prevention and control towards eliminating the disease by 2030.

It will also proposewith PM Phuc measures and action programmes related to the disease.

The Ministry of Healthis responsible for ensuring work facilities for the committee.

Around 12,000 people diefrom tuberculosis each year in Vietnam - that’s one and half times higher thanthose killed in traffic accidents over the same period, according to theNational Lung Hospital.

Vietnam is in theworld’s top 30 countries with high tuberculosis rates. The country ranks 16thin the number of tuberculosis patients and 13th in the rankings ofdrug-resistant tuberculosis patients. Seventy percent are of working age(between 15 and 55).

It is estimated that Vietnamstill has 124,000 newly detected cases each year./.