Earlier today, Prof Isaac Adewole listened to India’s plans to end TB by 2025 knowing that Nigeria is nowhere near
Nigeria’s health minister, Prof Isaac Adewole, is leading Nigeria’s delegation to the Delhi End-TB Summit that kicked off officially this morning. The summit is also being attended by the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and the Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
In addition to Adewole, the summit is also being attended by the health ministers of Indonesia, Bangladesh, South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Kazakhstan, Peru and Brazil.
Inaugurating the summit, HealthNews.NG can report that Modi announced that India has 2025 as the year it would eradicate tuberculosis.
The Prime Minister of India also launched Tuberculosis Free India Campaign, which will take the activities of National Strategic Plan (NSP) for TB elimination forward in Mission mode. With the funding of around Rs 12,000 crore over the next three years, the motto of the NSP is to ensure every TB patient has access to quality diagnosis, treatment, and support.
“I would like to announce that we have set the aim to eradicate TB from India by 2025, the Prime Minister said at the ‘End TB Summit’ in Delhi.
“We have not been successful in curbing Tuberculosis yet. I believe that if something doesn’t yield result even after 10-15 years then we need to change our approach. The situation needs to be analysed,” PM Modi added.
HealthNews.NG noted that the Prime Minister’s vision to end TB by 2025, five years ahead of the Sustainable Development Goals has galvanized the efforts of the Revised National Tuberculosis Program, which has treated over two crore patients since its inception in 1997.
TB was responsible for 1.7 million deaths in 2016, despite most cases being curable. Over 10 million people contract TB every year. WHO South-East Asia Region, which hosts about one-fourth of the global population, shares a disproportionate 46% global TB disease burden.
In his remark, WHO DG commended the Indian Prime Minister for supporting efforts to end tuberculosis.
“I thank the PM of India for his support to #EndTB. We are witnessing an increased and unprecedented political commitment to end TB globally. We saw it in Moscow, now in Delhi, and we will see it again for the United Nations General Assembly High-level meeting,” the DG said.
According to him, India is taking enormous and bold steps to win the war against TB.
“This will be a critical contribution to win the tuberculosis war globally.”
Nigeria’s worsening TB indices
Just last week, Dr Osagie Ehanire, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Health, disclosed that while there are an estimated 10.4 million cases of tuberculosis worldwide, Nigeria ranks fourth among the 30 highest TB burden countries in the world and first in Africa.
He said this while commissioning projects at the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Training Centre, Zaria, Kaduna State.
“Tuberculosis is today still a serious public health problem in many parts of the world, causing the death of nearly one-and-half million people each year, most of them in developing countries. The 2017 WHO global TB Report tells us that there are an estimated 10.4 million new TB cases worldwide, of which 5.9 million (56%) are men and 3.5 million (34%) are women with 1 million (10%) being children,” Ehanire said.
The minister added that the impact of TB is further worsened by the deleterious effect of the interaction between TB and HIV in a patient.
Ehanire lamented that the emergence of a drug-resistance type of TB which challenge TB control in Nigeria had compounded the problem. He however patted the present-day Nigerian government on the back for taking bold steps to control TB in Nigeria.
He enumerated some of the steps to include the intervention of modern GeneXpert MTB/RIF technology as the primary tool for detecting TB cases among presumptive sufferers in the population.
“The machine is expected to markedly increase the number of TB cases diagnosed in the country. We are ensuring integration of care for TB into the core package of the Revitalisation Agenda of Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) in the country.
“This is to bring effective healthcare service closer to the people and so provide ease of access and increased patronage of TB and other services”.