In the last four years 5, 500 cases in risk have been investigated and 71 of them suffered the disease. This number of patients surpasses in more than three times the figure obtained in the passive search that is usually carried out when a patient goes to the health centers with respiratory problems.

A wire from Cuban News Agency in Las Tunas quotes the words by Doctor Jorge Luis Brooks, masters in Epidemiology and main author of this study, who asserted that the investigation consists on the location of people who suffer the disease, by means of a land work in selected groups that have risk factors.

According to the specialist the active search contributes to avoid the propagation of the pathology when detecting in a precocious form the people that suffer it, something that has been fundamental for reducing the rate of affected by the tuberculosis in Las Tunas at 7.5 per each 100, 000 inhabitants.

The investigation is guaranteed by the Tropical Medicine Institute Pedro Kourí, of Havana, and its similar in Belgium and will be very useful for the intention of Cuba to declare the disease eliminated in 2010, five years before world-wide level, because according to the United Nations's Objectives for the Millenium, the world pretends to eradicate this pathology in 2015.

(Tiempo21.cu)