Govt Remains Committed in the Fight to End TB by 2030- Deputy Health Minister
The government through the Ministry of Health has reaffirmed the commitment to end the tuberculosis epidemic by 2030 with a policy that would support stakeholders in the tuberculosis programme.
The Deputy Minister for Health, Hon Asei Seini Mahama, said this at the Media launching of the 2023 Word Day against TB in Accra, on Friday, March 24, 2023.
Speaking on the theme, “Yes We Can End TB”, an urgent call to the global epidemic, the Deputy Minister said the Government recognized that TB disproportionately affects the well-being of the people and development and that proactive policies are been taken to tackle the disease.
According to him, the government is collaborating with the Global Fund to put up a TB centre at Nsawam in the Eastern region as part of the measures to achieve the 2023 target to end TB.
While commending the National Tuberculous Programme managers for the sterling performance over the years to end the disease, Hon Asei Mahama who is also the Member of Parliament for Daboya/Mankarigu urged them to double the effort with action rather than periodic commemorative speeches.
He expressed the need to find people living with the disease as it was very crucial for the country following the detection of over 15,000 TB cases out of the estimated annual number of 44,000 TB cases expected, stressing that reports indicated that about 29,000 TB cases were undiagnosed.
“TB is such a formidable enemy that we should be armed with the necessary information, knowledge, and skill to combat it anywhere,” the Deputy Minister added.
He again called for a concerted effort for Ghana to provide more effective measures to end TB to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), noting that, the government had procured some sophisticated laboratory equipment including 48 digital X-ray and 128 GeneXpert machines in an effort to detect early and treat all unidentified TB cases and ensure that no one died of TB.
Further, leaders requested the Secretary-General, with support from the World Health Organization (WHO), provide a progress report in 2020 on global and national progress to achieve agreed-upon TB goals within the context of achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The National Tuberculosis Programme (NTP) Manager, Dr. Yaw Adusi-poku said tuberculosis claimed about 15,000 annually, despite it being a preventable, treatable and curable disease.
He said within six months, over 50 children in the Ashanti region have been diagnosed with TB, a situation he said needed intensive advocacy, stressing that aside from the moral failings of that mortality rate, the economic losses are staggering.
He however urged government and stakeholders in health now as lives could be saved and economic losses could as well be eliminated.
“Life with TB is painful and we are particularly concerned about the increasing rate of MDR-TB, But we are confident that, together with families, civil society groups and other stakeholders, the fight against TB will be won,” Dr. Yaw Adusi-Poku noted.
Whilst globally, TB is the 13th leading cause of death and the second leading infectious killer and responsible for 1.6 million deaths in 2021, Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) has increasingly become a significant concern for health authorities. It is a form of TB caused by bacteria that do not respond to isoniazid and rifampicin, the two most effective first-line TB drugs.
Though MDR-TB is treatable and curable by using second-line drugs, such treatment options are limited and require extensive chemotherapy of at least 9 months and up to 20 months of treatment with medicines that are expensive and toxic.
In Ghana, the National TB Control Programme (NTP) has been instrumental in providing guidelines, treatment and support to clients affected by the disease. Since 2016 there have been great advances in the detection of Drug-resistant and Drug Sensitive TB cases, with GeneXpert is now the main diagnostic tool in investigating TB.
A representative of the World Health Organisation, Dr. Francis Chisaka Casolo, identified the lack of advocacy and stigmatization as the contributing factor to the increasing level of TB in Ghana and called on the government through the Ministry of Health to map out strategies to deal with it.
He assured that the WHO remained to determine in helping the nation to attain the 20230 targets of ending TB and would continue to offer support to Ghana to realized the end of TB.
Some stakeholders in their solidarity messages to commemorate World TB Day shared similar concerns and called on the government for support to step up the advocacy in the country side, especially in remote communities where some TB diseases are never reported.
Source: expressnewsghana.com
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