adminThe Herald, 22 April 1983
DEVELOPING countries should have nationwide health systems and efficient laboratory services to control tuberculosis effectively, delegates at a seminar on the disease in Harare, heard yesterday.
Delegates spoke of the need to decentralise services and integrate them with the primary health care systems in developing countries.
Dr S.J. Nkinda from Tanzania said the problem of “periphery services” was not the supply of equipment, but of motivation and supervision of staff so that comprehensive and accurate diagnoses of TB were made.
The delegates discussed how a central laboratory could co-ordinate with district and rural services, so that specimens and slides could be transported and processed quickly.
Professor Fadhila Boulahbal from Algeria said that if a microscopist had 80 percent accuracy in diagnosis, the population was being treated adequately, but if there was more than a 20 percent error margin, the technicians should be given more training and supervision.
Dr Gilhario Texeira from Brazil suggested that there was no use building extra facilities if the attitude of the health staff was not correct.
Health staff generally avoided cases of TB because there was a risk of becoming infected themselves.
The problems health staff faced were largely administrative — lack of training and supervision — and insufficient transport and resources to do the job.
Because of these problems, countries like Tanzania reported only a 50 percent diagnosis rate.
From the papers presented it was clear that the delegates regarded X-rays as an unsuitable way of detecting TB in developing countries because it was so expensive, cumbersome to transport to remote areas and not reliable, since other bacilli can look like TB on an X-ray plate.
Instead, health staff should be trained to use slides or cultures which diagnosed the disease more accurately.
“The chemotherapy treatment is much specialised, but this must be simplified so that it can be administered by paramedical staff,” said Dr Texeira.
LESSONS FOR TODAY
Infectious or communicable diseases have killed millions the world over, and the solution to their total elimination is through collaborative research among experts in the health sciences and related fields. Billions of dollars are required to fund the research.
According to specialists, infectious diseases like tuberculosis, Ebola, measles and now the deadly new coronavirus (COVID-19) are “disorders caused by organisms such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites. Many of these organisms live in and on our bodies.”
Although TB has killed millions over the past century, nobody ever thought that COVID-19 would have such devastating effects in every area of people’s lives. It is wiping off the gains made in the past decades.
Declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation, its effects will be worse than that of the Spanish flu, Ebola, HIV and Aids, and other communicable diseases.
Although the COVID-19 figures in Africa are still moderate, the new virus has exposed the continent and shown that it has to heavily invest in health care, instead of the “haves” relying on foreign health care systems.
Online Reporter