Every year tuberculosis kills about 130,000 Chinese and currently more than six million Chinese are suffering from the activity pulmonary tuberculosis, according to statistics released at a national seminar.

The tuberculosis infection rate once declined for years, but it has begun to increase recently, said Wu Qiqiu from Beijing Tuberculosis and Tumor of Chest Institute said at the seminar on vertebral joint and osteoarticular tuberculosis held in Yinchuan, northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

Statistics show that annual death of tuberculosis is two times the total death of all kinds of infectious disease and parasites in China. The highest tuberculosis rates are in the central and west regions of the country, especially from the rural areas.

(Xinhua News Agency  September 3, 2004)