WHO REGIONAL DIRECTOR CALLS FOR TB FREE AFRICA!!!

AS HE IMPLORES ON AFRICAN LEADERS TO MOBILIZE MORE RESOURCES TO FIGHT TB

By Staff Reporter Fatou Barry, Banjul

As global festivities rocked the African continent to commemorate World Tuberculosis day, the World Health Organization Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Louis Gomez Sambo Tuesday called on African Governments to help mobilize additional resources to tackle TB, which is gradually ravaging to the region. 

Deputizing the WHO Regional Boss for Africa, Dr. Thomas Sukwa, the WHO Country Representative to The Gambia, called for the establishment of “National Stop TB  Partnership” in the region in a bid to curb the TB menace on the continent. The WHO Representative expressed the need for ongoing fight to tackle TB to be intensified.

The disease is curable, but a significant number of Africans have been hard hit by TB.  The disease is transmitted through air pollution, contaminated food, and breathing.  

The theme for this year’s anti TB celebrations is centered on “innovation” with a strong emphasis  “on the move against tuberculosis.” World Health Organization officials are calling for a concerted efforts to help eradicate TB.

According to Dr Sambo “theme and the slogan respond directly to the need to accelerate our efforts towards greater community involvement and an increased research with a view to ensuring better and more accurate diagnostic methods, and access to treatment, including treatment of drug-resistant cases. Dr. Sambo observes that TB remains a communicable disease of major public health concern in the African region, adding that the African region has the highest TB notification rate per 100, 000 population.

Dr. Sambo also observes that the continent accounts for about 47% of estimated new TB cases in the population are identified of which only 79% complete their treatment. He adds that 35% of all TB cases in the region are also infected with HIV, the virus that causes aids.

The WHO Representative told the gathering that  33 countries in the region have reported at least one case of Multi-Drug Resistant TB, and eight of them have reported at least one case of extensively drug resistant TB. This worrying statistics is of great concern to the WHO, and other partners in the fight against TB.

The WHO boss also commented on the weak health systems in some countries in the African continent. He notes “that  inadequate government funding of TB control activities, scarce quality-assured TB laboratory networks, limited trained personnel to deliver quality TB services, and weak recording and reporting systems for monitoring disease trends, and assessing the impact of interventions, and financial flows as some of the major impediments to accelerated scale up of control activities.”

Dr. Sambo calls for urgent need for renewed intergovernmental partnership, and actions in the fight against TB. He says the continent has only five years to go before the Millennium Developmental Goals otherwise known as (MDG’s) target year. The WHO Boss also appealed for public participation in the fight against the disease.

The Gambian Government has been playing a leading role in helping the WHO to accomplish its goal in eradicating TB in this country. There have numerous educational programs both radio, and TV to help raise the awareness of the population about the disease.