Eighty percent of Chinese TB patients live in rural areas and have a significantly higher risk of contracting the disease than those in urban areas, China Daily reported. "TB has become one of the main diseases that make lots of rural families fall into serious poverty in the country, which has 4.5 million TB patients," said Mao Qun'an, a health ministry deputy director. Various regions report prevalence rates that differ greatly, with poverty-stricken western China reporting a rate 1.7 times that of the north. Wang Lushen, deputy director of the China Health Economics Institute, said 60 percent of rural patients do not finish TB treatment because they cannot afford to pay, leading to a drug resistance rate among TB patients of 27.8 percent. China has implemented the DOTS TB-control strategy to fight the problem. By 2010, more than 95 percent of China will have adopted the program.

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