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Fred Ezeh, Abuja
World Health Organisation (WHO), has called for increased financial support to tackle Tuberculosis (TB) which they described as number one infectious killer disease in the world.
It said that there was a huge funding gap of $157 million to raise advocacy and increase coverage of TB services in Nigeria.
WHO Officer in charge of TB, Dr. Ayodele Awe, who briefed journalists in Abuja, ahead of the 2020 World TB Day, expressed fears that Nigeria may not meet the 2030 target to end TB in the country, unless government at all levels intensify efforts.
He said that available report indicats that Nigeria detected 120,000 cases of TB in 2018, which was the highest figure recorded so far in the last 10 years. He also raised concerns that there was a need to track and detect the remaining 300,000 cases who are at risk of transmitting the disease to some other persons.
In his words: “We have the highest TB burden in Africa. We are supposed to detect 429,000 cases each year. Last year was the greatest number that has ever been detected over the 10 years; we were able to detect 120,000 cases.
“There are free drugs everywhere and the target elimination for TB is 2030. We are in 2020 and the progress is unimpressive.”
The Chairman, House Committee on TB, HIV/AIDS and Malaria, Abubakar Dajiru, said there would be an increased legislative engagement on TB with a view to reducing the scourge.
He pledged that each legislator would purchase a TB testing machine, called Gene Xpert machine, for their constituency.
Meanwhile, the Executive Director, KNCV TB Foundation, Dr. Odume Bethrand, has called on political leaders to invest more on TB control, and challenged the civil society to continue to call for accountability and the media to always help in creating the needed awareness.
