From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Federal Government has raised the alarm that drug resistant Tuberculosis (TB) is on the rise in Nigeria, particularly among children and young adults.
The government said the situation, if not arrested as quickly as possible can snowball into catastrophic situation that would be injurious to the health and wellbeing of the future generation.
National Coordinator, National TB and Leprosy Control Programme, Dr. Chukwuma Anyaike, disclosed the information at a press conference to herald the activities for the 2022 World TB Day, in Abuja, on Thursday, with the theme “invest to end TB, save lives”.
He appreciated the recent efforts that culminated in detecting more lost cases, and bringing them into the treatment net, stressing that funding has been a big challenge for the case finding and treatment.
“TB remains a deadly bacteria infectious diseases, and more investment is required to continue the efforts to detect and treat the cases. One of the major challenge we have is that the drug resistant cases is increasing significantly, and it’s a huge problem for us.
“More worrisome is the fact that our children are coming down with the drug resistant TB, and they are dying of the disease. We must do the needful as quickly as possible to have a healthy posterity that would be useful to the society and economy.”
He advocated a new approach to tackle the issue of poor awareness creation among Nigerians particularly those at the rural communities. “Also, there are indications that only 25 per cent of Nigerian have information about TB, and that needs to be corrected, alongside the issue of stigmatization.”
The Acting Board Chairman, Stop TB Partnership Nigeria, Dr. Queen Ogbuji, in her speech, explained that the World TB Day being celebrated every March 24th was designed to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic impact of TB, and urged acceleration of efforts to end the global TB epidemic.
She said: “TB remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious killers. Each day, about 4,100 people lose their lives to TB and nearly 30,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease.
“The disease is the leading cause of death of people with HIV and a major contributor to antimicrobial resistance. Global efforts to combat TB have saved an estimated 66 million lives since the year 2000, but the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years of progress made in the fight to end TB.
“For the first time in over a decade, TB deaths increased in 2020. So, the forthcoming World TB Day will be an opportunity to focus on the people affected by this disease and to call for accelerated action to end TB suffering and deaths, especially in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.”
She disclosed that Nigeria is among the 30 high burden countries for TB, TB/HIV and MDR-TB, and it’s ranked 6th among the 30 high TB burden countries globally and 1st in Africa
She added: “Nigeria accounts for 11 per cent of the global gap between TB incidence and notified cases. Out of 452,000 estimated new TB cases in Nigeria in 2020, only 138,591 were notified to the NTBLCP with 30 per cent treatment coverage.
“Nigeria recorded a 50 per cent increase in TB notification from 138,591 TB cases in 2020 to 207,785 TB cases in 2021, and only six per cent of all forms of notified TB cases in 2021 are children less than 15 years
“Of an estimated 21,000 DR-TB cases recorded in 2020, only 2,061 (10%) were diagnosed and 72 per cent of them enrolled on second line treatment, and an estimated 18 people per hour die of TB-related disease, that is 432 every day and over 156,000 every year.”