This is Robert Cohen with the VOA Special English DevelopmentReport.

The World Health Organization says tuberculosis rates havedropped in China thanks to the DOTS program. DOTS is a way forcountries to try to control tuberculosis.

The full name is directly observed treatment-short course.Directly observed means that someone watches to make sure peopletake their daily medicine. Full treatment usually lasts from six toeight months.

Some people stop as soon as they feel better. That only makes theinfection more difficult to treat. The patient also remains a riskto others.

The DOTS program calls for stronggovernment support.

China started its program with help from the World Bank and theW.H.O. in nineteen-ninety-one. Health officials established theprogram in half the population. After ten years researchers did anational study of tuberculosis.

Doctors estimated there were thirty percent fewer cases in theDOTS half than in the other half of the population. The W.H.O. saysthe results prove that the program should be expanded throughoutChina.

More than one million new cases of tuberculosis are reported inChina each year. India has a worse situation. The W.H.O. estimatesthat forty percent of the eight million people in the world with TBlive in China or India. But the agency says those two countries andothers have made progress to reduce rates of infection.

The rates are up, however, in southern Africa and the countriesof the former Soviet Union. The AIDS virus is to blame in Africa.Someone with H.I.V. is ten times more likely to become infected withtuberculosis.

The situation is different in the former Soviet republics.Experts say the disease is spreading there mostly because infectedpeople are not taking their medicine correctly.

A bad cough is not the only sign of tuberculosis. Others includepain in the chest, increased body temperature and coughing up blood.The bacteria spread through the air when the person coughs orsneezes.

Each year about two million people die from tuberculosis. TheWorld Health Organization wants to expand the DOTS program to morecountries. In two thousand two, only thirty-seven percent of allcases were treated this way.

The United Nations wants to cut in half the number of TB cases bytwo thousand fifteen.

This VOA Special English Development Report was written by JillMoss. This is Robert Cohen.