By Prudence Eboagwu-Ijah
The Federal Government has identified a huge gap in childhood tuberculosis diagnosis stating that despite the progress being made in finding missing TB cases and treatment, there is poor notification for child TB cases.
The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire who disclosed this in his Keynote address at the Ministerial Press Briefing in Commemoration of 2022 World TB Day in Nigeria said the poor notification is due to capacity gaps among healthcare workers in diagnosing Tuberculosis in childhood.
Ehanire said, Nigeria notified highest number of child TB cases of 12,977 in 2021 and the child TB proportion amongst the overall TB notification for the same year was 6% as the figure is far lower than the World Health Organization(WHO) benchmark of 12% and this implies a high proportion of missing child TB cases in Nigeria.
He further revealed that the government’s Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (DR-TB) response has equally not yielded the desired results, as barely 2,975 (14%) of the estimated 21,000 DR-TB cases were notified in 2021and another disturbing trend is the low enrolment rate of diagnosed DR-TB patients on treatment.
“Only 2,197 (74%) of diagnosed DR-TB patients were enrolled on treatment in 2021. This is not encouraging as it is a far cry from our target of 100% enrolment for diagnosed DR-TB patients. These untreated DR-TB patients constitute a time bomb as they continuously spread DR-TB in our communities”.
The Minister stated that TB preventive treatment (TPT) is also another concerning aspect of our TB response and in 2021, Nigeria achieved only 7% of its target for TPT amongst under-5 and above-5 years’ contacts of bacteriologically confirmed TB patients.
In responses to the aforementioned challenges, Ehanire disclosed that the federal government is committed to implementing the road map towards Ending Tuberculosis as this aligns to the commitment made by His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari to END TB at the first-ever United Nations High-level Meeting (UNHLM) on TB in New York, United States in September, 2018.
“In line with the commitment, we developed and currently implementing a road map for translating the commitments into action. As earlier highlighted, these efforts are gradually yielding the desired results as we were able to achieve 48% of our UNHLM TB case finding target for 2021. Let me inform you that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Nigeria was commended for being among few countries with increased TB notification rather than a drop in 2020”.
Ehanire however affirmed that this years’ world TB day theme “Invest to END TB, Save Lives” and slogan “Give More, Do More, End TB Now!” is apt and fully aligns with our kick-out TB initiative.
On his part, the World Health Organization Country Representative, Dr Walter Kazadi Molumbo in his goodwill message reinstated the urgent need for more resources to be invested to ramp up the fight against TB in line with commitments to end TB made by global leaders including His Excellency, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, at the first-ever UN High Level Meeting on TB in 2018; which for Nigeria was to diagnose and treat 1,109,000 TB cases and place 2,183,890 clients on TB preventive therapy (TPT) between 2018 and 2022.
Molumbo further stated that TB remains the top 10 causes of death worldwide and the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent with estimated 10 million people that had TB in 2020, with Nigeria and seven other countries accounting for two thirds of this global burden.
He however advocated for the inclusion of Tuberculosis treatment in the health insurance scheme.
“The Hon Minister may therefore consider facilitating all states to include TB in their health insurance schemes as they become operational”.
“WHO will continue to support towards keeping TB control strategies up to date, strengthening partnerships, fostering innovation, finding missing cases and building capacity for all facets of TB control”.
In her remarks, USAID Nigeria director Rachel Goldstein noted the 70 percent funding gap of tuberculosis hence the need to mobilize domestic resources to fill this gap through budgetary allocation and innovations in health insurance.
World Tuberculosis day is celebrated on March 24 every year to raise public awareness of the health, social and economic consequences of TB and to intensify efforts to end the global epidemic.
Be the first to comment