pGhana joined the rest of the world last Friday to commemorate Tuberculosis (TB) Day with a charge on all and sundry to help find undiagnosed TB cases within the society.
Health minister, Kwaku Agyeman Manu, in a speech read on his behalf, observed that an estimated 29,000 TB cases are “walking on our streets undiagnosed”, a situation that undermined strides made in detecting the disease and fighting it.
“It is imperative for us all to find, treat and cure all these missed TB cases to reach our final goal of ending TB,” he charged.
Marked on the theme, “It’s time….find the missing people with TB”, the event, organised by the National TB Control Programme (NTP), had in attendance officials of the Ministry of Health (MoH), Ghana Health Service (GHS), and health related associations, civil society organisations in health, traditional leaders and student nurses.
The minister disclosed that a comprehensive work plan for the implementation of the “TB prevention therapy”, an initiative to spur attitudinal change and willingness to prevent TB, was ready to be rolled out.
“Preventive treatment of TB infection could interrupt the cycle of infection, illness and death from TB and the ministry, together with its implementing partners, are from this year, implementing TB preventive treatment with vulnerable people, starting with people at high risk, such as HIV patients.”
Mr Manu further announced that government had begun processes of enrolling all TB patients on treatment unto the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) “to ensure these patients get comprehensive healthcare and are treated for other co-morbidities to reduce the death rate among our TB patients”.
Programmes Manager of the NTP, Dr Frank Bonsu, said only 32 more TB cases were reported in 2018 over the previous year’s number of 14,582.
“732 of these cases were children, representing 5.2 per cent of total case notification, with Greater Accra and Ashanti regions reporting the highest number of cases, however, over the last five years the national average case notification rates trend has plateau and showing early declining trend.”
Tuberculosis treatment outcomes for TB patients in Ghana, he said, continued to be one of the best on the sub-region pegging success rates at 86 per cent.
“The proportion of dying patients is unacceptably seven per cent mainly due to late reporting to healthcare centres,” he said.
Dr Bonsu could not agree more with the minister on the need to “work together to find all the missing people with TB cases”, stressing that, “it’s time to set aside stakeholders interest that serves as barrier to rapid implementation of evidence based interventions”.
Speaking on behalf of the Director-General, GHS, Dr Badu Sarkodie, the Director of Public Health, cautioned the public against risk factors that exposed them to poor lung health.
“Indoor and outdoor air pollution, asthma, smoking, pneumonia, among others, affect lung health and breathing. Most of these conditions are preventable if the risk factors are avoided,” he said, adding that, “it is the lack of awareness and knowledge in risk factors that has contributed to the poor state of health of many Ghanaians with TB as a severe casualty”.
There were calls from other partner agencies to unite to fight TB, with the Country Representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Dr Owen Kaluwa, calling for civil society organisations and community systems to be strengthened to provide ready diagnostic support and care where patients lived and worked to assist government’s efforts in tackling the disease.
By Abigail Annoh
