As infectious diseases rises as day go by ,the World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that achieving Nigeria’s target to diagnose and treat one million tuberculosis (TB) cases by 2022 is very feasible.
It stressed that the days of ‘pilot studies’ are over, and urged the government, partners and other relevant stakeholders in the TB community to comprehensively expand interventions and services to all private and public facilities.
The global health body commended the achievement of the government in finding new TB cases, especially during the covid-19 lockdown last year. It stated that the country detected 138,573 new TB cases, compared to 120,266 detected in 2019..
The Country Representative of the WHO, Dr Walter Mulombo, made these known in Abuja, during a virtual Pre-World TB Day press briefing.
Represented by Dr Amos Omoniyi, he said: “I like to congratulate the TB program in Nigeria for the progress they made. Despite the pandemic in the year 2020 and the 3-month lockdown, the TB program in Nigeria recorded an increase in the number of cases detected. Last year, which was the year of the pandemic happened to be the year they had the highest number detected TB cases. We see the number increase from over 120,266 in 2019 to 138,573 in 2020. This means that we are on the right path.
“If you look at our commitment in 2018 that the country Nigeria made to the UN high-level meeting on tuberculosis, we made a commitment to diagnose and treat about a million tuberculosis cases between 2018 and 2022. We also made a commitment to put over a million under five and above 5 contacts on tuberculosis preventive therapy.”
-NATION
