"Why does the policy work only when tuberculosis develops?"
Cheon-tae Kim, president of the Korea Tuberculosis Association, said, "We need preventive care."
While the environment from public office to private has changed, the mission of fighting tuberculosis remains to him. Kim stressed that the government should support more research on tuberculosis.
◇ "No more post-mortem visits."
- This is the fourth month since he took office as head of the Tuberculosis Research Institute.
It toured most of its 12 branches. He also had a personal interview with the researchers. I was busy preparing seminars and a road map for the association.
- What do you think of the national tuberculosis management project from the outside?
Since central and local governments are paying for the project one-on-one, continuity of project cannot be achieved. The government project for tuberculosis-related infectious diseases is desirable.
- The direction of business is as important as business continuity.
There needs to be a proactive change from what has been focused on patient care since the outbreak. Preventive treatment or monitoring should be done to prevent the outbreak by taking good care of those who have been diagnosed as positive for latent tuberculosis. Therefore, treatment should be made without aftereffects.
- We need a preemptive response?
Policies need to change flexibly according to the number of patients and global trends. Korea has been taking care of patients with the disease, and the decrease in TB cases is more moderate than the original goal. Therefore, "aggressive" measures are needed that focus on managing the outbreak. Of course, this requires the injection of budget.
- What's the Tuberculosis Research Institute's mission?
It's like a government mission. The institute is run to fight tuberculosis. We conduct diagnostic tests on samples commissioned by national health centers. Recently, non-nuclear lung disease has been on the rise. It is urgent to supply standardized test badges for tuberculosis examination in Korea and to create conditions for tuberculosis research.
- I heard that he also acts as an accelerator for tuberculosis research ventures.
If you want to develop a fast diagnosis kit from outside, the institute will jointly develop diagnostic kits and evaluate them in a package. When technology development takes place, the company will apply for a patent and hand over the copyright after transferring the technology.
- We're considering researchers' own lab ventures, etc.
Rapid diagnostic kits can be developed on their own in the future, but our role is to the pre-development stage. The current emphasis is on the standard TB badge. Currently, different TB testing agencies are making and using badges. If quality control (QC) is considered, standard badges should be made in the country and supplied jointly. We are currently setting up a tuberculosis laboratory, which can supply standard badges in the future.
- I think there will be difficulties, too.
The association should act as a think tank. To this end, we have to do some basic research, but we don't have funding for policy research. If you try to cater to the institutions that pay for research, you lose direction. It is difficult to produce research results such as direction we should go in the future, pilot projects, and expert evaluations of the introduction of new drugs.
