Around half of the adult population of the country are infected by the virus, they said.

Terming TB as a serious threat to public health, the speakers underscored the need for social mobilisation with communication channels and urged for more media support as well as awareness campaign to help control the disease.

Chittagong Press Club (CPC) and Brac jointly organised the discussion styled "TB Control Programme: Media Support" yesterday morning at the CPC auditorium with its president Abu Sufian in the chair. About 60 journalists of different newspapers and TV channels, other professionals and NGO activists participated in the roundtable.

Additional Divisional Commissioner Golam Quddus, Civil Surgeon of Chittagong Dr Khurshid Jamil Chowdhury, CPC General Secretary Kalim Sarwar, Senior Health Coordinator of Brac Abdus Salam and Brac official Mahfuza Jasmine spoke at the function. Dr M Akramul Islam, Brac programme manager, made a multi-media presentation on the topic.

The speakers observed that case detection rate in Bangladesh is still behind desired level saying that detection rate is needed to be increased by at least 70 percent by the year 2015 in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG).

"Although the country touched the MDG target (85 percent) in achieving treatment success rate in 2003, it needs strong measures to maintain the success rate in future," they said.