Korea is often lauded for its rags to riches story but, even to this day, the country struggles with tuberculosis, a disease associated with poverty and the developing world.

As recently as August, an outbreak of tuberculosis was reported at a cram school in Yangcheon-gu, western Seoul, infecting more than 40 students and teachers with the highly contagious disease. Some 120 more carried the latent form of TB, according to local health officials at the time.

That outbreak was no aberration. In fact, the incidence of TB in Korea is the highest in the 34-nation Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.

Korea’s incidence rate of tuberculosis was 97 out of 100,000 in 2010, according to the World Health Organization, while the mortality rate of TB here was 5.4. TB claimed the lives of 2,365 Koreans that year, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Jorge Sampaio, former president of Portugal and the United Nations secretary-general’s special envoy to stop tuberculosis, came to Korea Thursday and Friday to attend a strategy meeting of the U.N.’s “Stop TB Partnership” with a strong message for government leaders here: Do more in the fight to stop the spread of what he called “one of the world’s infectious killers,” along with HIV/AIDS and malaria.

“I am making a call to Korean authorities, and meeting three ministers, for additional financial and political support to meet the TB millennium development goal to halt or reverse the incidence of TB,” Sampaio said in an interview with The Korea Herald on the sidelines of a Stop TB Partnership’s East Asia and the Pacific regional meeting.

Sampaio met Finance Minister Bahk Jae-wan, Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan and Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik during his two-day visit here, and departed Friday for Malaysia.

“My second request to the Korean authorities, and I said this in my speech today, is that they give extra support to TB control in this region with their aid and cooperation policy, because of the extraordinary burden of TB on those inflicted by the disease and their families. There is a dramatic burden of TB in this region,” he said.

In fact, TB is predominantly found among the poor and in Asia. About 60 percent of cases worldwide occur in Asia, Sampaio said.

But the burden of tuberculosis in Korea today is primarily a legacy of the Korean War and the severe poverty in the war’s aftermath.

TB is still reported occasionally in wealthy Western nations, but it is rare.

The incidence rate of TB was 6 in Australia and 9 in New Zealand in 2010 and the mortality rate is even lower. Fewer than 0.18 cases resulted in death in the U.S., for example, during the same time period.

Other wealthy nations in East Asia have a higher incidence rate than wealthy European and North American countries, but still remarkably lower than Korea’s. In 2006, Japan and Singapore had an incidence rate of 22 and 26, respectively, compared to 88 reported cases in Korea.

Sampaio said Korea is still in a position to help others in the region facing a much direr TB problem, with Korea’s financial resources and advanced medical system and, importantly, its renewed resolve to confront this deadly infectious disease.

This he said is crucial, because eight of the 22 countries with the world’s highest incidence rates of TB are in Asia, including India, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia.

Sampaio said that among the many factors involved in making tackling TB so problematic today is the stigma and shame associated with the disease.

“One thing is that it is a hidden illness, in the sense that people don’t show it, and try to hide it,” Sampaio said. “There is a misconception, there is a prejudice around TB and this makes it more difficult.”

Nonetheless, Korea has been making slow but steady progress in recent years fighting the disease. In 2008, the government pledged to reduce the incidence rate by a quarter in 10 years and to eliminate it completely by 2030.

The health ministry quadrupled its budget to fight TB to 45 billion won ($39.9 million) in 2012.

By Philip Iglauer (ephilip2011@heraldcorp.com)