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Explaining the reason behind creating such a course, Dr Julia Seyer, medical adviser, WMA, said, "When we started an online multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) training course in 2006, we discovered that many physicians were missing the most basic knowledge about normal TB."
She added that as the disease was virtually eradicated in developed countries, the doctors from these countries had never even seen a case of TB and had no basic training in diagnosing and treating the preventable disease.
In fact, she said that TB caused nine million new cases and two million deaths every year. Two billion people were infected with the disease worldwide. In some parts of the world, 75 per cent of HIV positive patients were infected with TB.
The new course is designed for the WMA by the New Jersey Medical School Global Tuberculosis Institute, USA. It is free of charge and although the course is available only in English at the moment, it will be translated into Spanish, French, Russian and Chinese.