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From Aniekan Aniekan, Calabar
Tuberculosis is claiming a life every 8 minutes in Nigeria, a country that bears the highest burden of the disease in Africa.
This alarming reality was highlighted by Mayowa Joel, Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership Nigeria, at a reception for health officials in Calabar, ahead of the 66th National Council on Health 2025 meeting.
According to him, “Tuberculosis is the number one infectious killer disease in the world and Nigeria is a high burden country with the leading TB burden in Africa.
“We are losing many lives due to a preventable and treatable disease.
“The Global TB report for 2024 says 500,000 people are infected with TB in Nigeria and one life is lost every 8 minutes to TB. This is needless and preventable,” he said.
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He said the Stop TB Partnership is ready to support every effort of government to end the menace of TB and also meet the 2030 target of the United Nations.
Also speaking, Ibrahim Tajudeen, the Executive Secretary of the Country Coordinating Mechanism for the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, said the funding landscape is reducing.
He tasked stakeholders to come up with innovations, particularly on the need to drastically reduce out-of-pocket expenses.
He also requested that stakeholders take advantage of the 1% Consolidated Fund that the government is utilising to strengthen health services across the 13,200 PHCs in the country.
