Dr. Yaw Adusi-Poku (Middle) with participants
Stakeholders in the health sector have called on government to support TB related programmes, to enable treatment of diagnosed TB cases especially at the districts level.
Speaking at a training workshop organised by the Ghana National TB Voice Network (GNTBVN) in Accra, Programmes Manager for the Ghana National TB Control Programme (NTP), Dr. Adusi-Poku, said that though government of Ghana has supported TB programmes over the years, more needed to be done in order to reach its target of eradicating TB by 2035.
According to him, more TB cases could be diagnosed and treated if cartridges were readily available to health workers particularly in rural communities.
“We want to diagnose them at the district hospitals and health centres but the gene experts are not everywhere. Out of about 261 districts, we have 171 gene experts, we need to expand it to make it accessible so that the mother or the care giver doesn’t travel for long, but will just travel to a health centre and get diagnosed,” he said.
Other challenges Dr. Adusi-Poku mentioned include inadequate diagnostic equipment, under-funding of TB, HIV collaborative activities, lack of TB implementing partners, gaps in OPD screening among others.
He said despite the challenges, the National TB control programme would work towards reducing TB incidence by 25% from 148 in 2018 to 111 per every 100, 000 of the population by 2025, as well as reduce the proportion of TB affected families.
He therefore appealed to all stakeholders including the media to support its activities aimed at educating the public on TB beyond the yet-to-be-celebrated world TB Day in March.
He said the United Nations High Level Meeting (UNHLM) though has made tremendous progress from 2018 to 2022 with about 15,000 detection and over 20,000 cases detected in 2020, assured the public of its readiness to meet its target for 2023 to 2027.
Executive Secretary of the Ghana Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) of the Global Fund, Samuel Hackman, who also lauded government for its commitment, appealed to government and other bodies to support them to purchase gene expert machines, second line drugs for TB patients among others, while appealing for increase in grants earmarked to tackle TB cases.
Present at the workshop were Jerry Amoah Larbi (Coordinator for the National TB voice Network), Alfred Tsiboe, Ernest Ortsin, Cecelia Senoo, Chief Austin Obiefuna, Aliyu Mohammed, Charity Femeyibor among several others.
Media participants after discussions also proposed some communication intervention activities that would help GNTBVN to achieve its vision of educating and tackling TB cases.
By Ebenezer K. Amponsah