The Moldovan Health Ministry will ask the Green Light Committee (GLC) of the World Health Organisation (WHO) to send medicines for patients who suffer from grave forms of tuberculosis for a lower price.

According to the ministerial press service, the annual cost of medicines to treat a single patient from a multiresistent form of TB varies between 4,000 and 8,000 dollars, and the treatment takes at least two years. If Moldova's request is accepted, GLC could lower the price of medicines down to 800-1,000 dollars per patient.

But GLC's approval needs a control of the quality of Moldovan laboratories for TB bacterial tests by an international laboratory certified by WHO, the ministry specified.

An international expert in the TB area, Ruri Arnadottir, at a recent meeting with the leaderships of the Moldovan Health Ministry and of the Unit of Implementation, Coordination and Monitoring of the Health Investments Fund project has said that Moldova has made a visible progress in TB struggle.

Statistics show that the incidence of TB in Moldova has increased by 98 percent in the past 12 years, and in penitentiaries the rate is 32-fold higher than generally per country. In 2003 alone doctors registered at least 4,000 new patients with TB.