By Jeremy Clarke NAIROBI, March 24 (Reuters) - About 13 Kenyans die of tuberculosis every hour and there is little immediate prospect of improvement, the head of a leading national health organisation said on Saturday which is World Tuberculosis Day. Allan Ragi, executive director of KANCO -- a consortium of more than 850 civil society organisations -- told Reuters Kenya stood out in the region for its poor tuberculosis (TB) programme and high infection rates. "If you call up a Kenyan member of parliament and ask about TB, they have no idea about it," Ragi said in an interview. About 117,000 cases were diagnosed by 2006, but that was possibly only half of total infections in Kenya, he said. "It is our hope that Saturday will see many more Kenyans become aware of TB. We need to change attitudes and stop this culture of hiding TB. But there is no cause for optimism until the government changes its attitude," he added. To spur awareness, activists took out double-page advertisements in the national dailies on Saturday and called on the Kenyan government to follow their lead. "The government needs to declare a TB national emergency. They must campaign the way they have for HIV, and give the money they promised to fight TB, but it is not happening," Ragi said. "Kenya loses 13 citizens every hour to TB, so more than 300 will die on Saturday," he said. SCOURGE OF AFRICA Over one million Africans lose their lives to TB every year. The continent has the world's highest rate of infection and is one of the few places where TB incidence is still on the rise. TB is a preventable and curable disease transmitted like the common cold. It attacks the lungs and can infect other parts of the body. If left untreated, an infected person will pass it on to an estimated 10 to 15 people, experts say. Ragi said neighbouring countries like Uganda were managing the disease better, while Kenya was falling behind because of its many slums and poor diagnostic methods. Kenya's slum-dwellers, in the millions, are particularly vulnerable to the highly infectious disease because of the lack of light and ventilation. "In the slums you have no windows, it's dark and everybody is coughing," Ragi said. Poverty and AIDS have fuelled a resurgence in the age-old scourge of TB in nations like Kenya. About half the population lives below the poverty line and most of its TB victims are also infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
