By Hassan John
The Deputy Project Director, Breakthrough Action Nigeria, Dr. Bolatito Ayenigba, has expressed concern over the lack of knowledge about Tuberculosis (TB) by most Nigerians despite the fact that treatment for the disease is free in all health centres across the country.
Responding to questions at a TB awareness walk in Abuja, she insisted there must be concerted efforts by all stakeholders in the country to ensure that TB awareness gets to all Nigerians and hence end the disease.
“For a long time in Nigeria, the treatment of TB is free but a lot of people don’t know that the facilities are there, so many people are not aware.
“That is why stakeholders have created a campaign christened-‘check-am oo, who no go no go know’ and that has helped to create awareness to know that not every cough is COVID-19.
“The good thing about TB is that the treatment is available and free even those with HIV can be completely cured of TB.
“And those with HIV who do not have TB but are prone to having the disease can have preventive therapy in order to prevent them from having the disease.
“In addition, anyone that is positive should make sure that relatives or anyone he or she has contact with should go for screening because sometimes only the person positive is treated without remembering that there are children and relatives around the person and needs to be protected as well. And there is a preventive treatment for such people and it is free as well. We want to ensure this 2023 that everyone is aware,” she stressed.
On his part, the Deputy Director, Programmatic Management of Drug-Resistant Tobacco Control (PMDT) NTBLCP of the Federal Ministry of Health, Dr Ahmad Muhammad Ozi, said that the government is not resting on its oars to ensure that TB awareness gets to all nooks and crannies of the country, noting that a lot of progress has been made but Nigeria still has a long way to go to meet the 2030 target of ending TB.
“As we are aware, March 24 is world TB day and we use this day to create awareness, we have other activities apart from creating awareness. Lots of policies have been put in place by the Federal Government. There are preventive campaigns, early testing which is free in every community and the policy says that the treatment is free.
“This is at the Federal Government level. The state is also planning their own so also the local government.
“We are thinking of ending TB in 2030 in Nigeria but as it is, the country still has a long way to go because of what we had last year. We were able to notify over 280,000 new cases out of 400,000 so you see we have covered about 60% notification rate. We still have about 40%, yes we still have a long way to go.
“We want to ensure we have the response of the TB program to the nearest minimum. We are not meeting the target for now. If we have about 400,00 cases to notify and we are notifying only about 280,000 cases, that means we still have a lot of missing cases,” Dr. Ozi noted.
