HYDERABAD, March 24: The students of the Noor Mohammad High School staged a protest demonstration outside the press club here on Monday, calling upon the Rangers to vacate school hostel meant for students from Sindh interior.

Speaking on the occasion, the students’ leaders, Arshad Zounr and Majid Abbasi, said that the stationing of the Rangers in the hostel had caused accomodation problems for students from the interior of the province.

They demanded ejection of the Rangers from the hostel and repair of the school building, which is in dilapidated condition.

They demanded that the income from the shops constructed on the property of the school be spent on welfare of the students and provision of scholarship to poor students.

AWARD: Professor Dr Mohammad Khan Lohar of faculty of crop production, entomology department, Sindh Agriculture University, has been given the award of best zoological expert for the year 2008 by the Pakistan Zoological Society.

The award was conferred on him at a recent function in Faisalabad which was attended by a large number of scientists from Pakistan and abroad.

Dr Lohar has already received the best teacher award from the Higher Education Commission.

TB: Eighty thousand people are attacked by tuberculosis (TB) and 10,000 to 12,000 die of the disease in Sindh every year.

This was stated by Dr Iqtedar Ahmed, director, TB Control Programme, Sindh, and Dr Nazeer Ahmed Shaikh, National Programme Officer, WHO, at a press conference here on Monday.

They said that the anti-TB programme was launched in Sindh in 2,000 and Tharparkar district was selected for the pilot project. They said that under the programme, all the TB patients had to be provided proper treatment by 2,010 and the mortality ratio had to be reduced by 50 per cent by 2,015.

They said that complete treatment of a TB patient took eight months and warned that if the disease was not treated, it developed resistance to ordinary drugs and then required two-year treatment at a cost of tens of thousands of rupees.

Earlier, people staged a walk from the gymkhana to the press club to mark the World TB Day. Similar walks were staged in other cities of Sindh also.