Ammon News - by Khetam Malkawi/ Jordan Times

AMMAN — The Ministry of Health has registered 120 cases of tuberculosis (TB) since the beginning of this year among Jordanians and other nationals residing the Kingdom, excluding Syrians, a ministry official said on Thursday.

Khaled Abu Rumman, director of the National Programme to Stop TB, said 56 of these cases were foreigners living in the country, who “are still here receiving treatment”.

Meanwhile, 55 Syrian refugees in Jordan have been diagnosed with the disease since 2011, Abu Rumman added.

“We provide Syrian TB patients with medication, food and financial assistance, as we provide these services to any Jordanian who has the disease”, he told The Jordan Times.

He previously noted that the monthly cost of medication for each of these patients is JD150.

Last year, 330 TB cases were detected among Jordanians and 69 among non-Jordanians residing in the country, according to official figures.

In 2011, 233 Jordanians were diagnosed with TB, compared with 232 in 2010 and 272 in 2009.

TB is an infectious bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which most commonly affects the lungs, according to the World Health Organisation. It is transmitted from person to person via droplets from the throat and lungs of people with the active respiratory disease.

In healthy people, infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis often causes no symptoms since the person’s immune system acts to “wall off” the bacteria.

The symptoms of active TB of the lung are coughing, sometimes with sputum or blood, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever and night sweats. Tuberculosis is treatable with a six-month course of antibiotics.