The country yesterday joined the global community to commemorate this year’s World Tuberculosis (TB) Day with a renewed commitment to treat all TB cases.
The Ghana Health Service (GHS), which organised the forum, said that had become necessary because although treatment was free, the detection of TB cases declined by 15 per cent in 2020. This meant that more people with the highly infectious disease remained undiagnosed, thus posing a public health threat and undermining strides made in the fight against the disease over the years.
The day is observed every March 24 to raise public awareness of the devastating health, social and economic consequences of TB and step up efforts to end the global TB epidemic.
Globally, it was marked on the theme: “The clock is ticking,” to convey the message that the world was running out of time to act on the commitments to end TB by 2035, made by global leaders.
According to the National TB Control Programme, a unit under the GHS, the 15 per cent reduction in case detection translated in a reduction from 14,691 cases in 2019 to 12,443 in 2020
“We have the needed platform in the country to propel us to achieve the set targets. Our focus now is to re-strategise to improve TB case finding amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We have a robust and a well integrated health system with 132 GeneX machines and 55 digital X-rays in the country to test for TB.
Some of the equipment have been calibrated to also start testing for COVID 19,” the Director-General of the GHS, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, said in a speech read on his behalf at a media engagement in Accra yesterday as part of activities to mark the day.
He said respiratory infection remained one of the biggest infectious diseases that killed in low and middle-income countries, including Ghana, hence no case should be missed.
Source:Fiilafmonline/Graphic
