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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke Senior Health Reporter
Zimbabwe’s fight to end tuberculosis remains suppressed despite significant progress that has been recorded over the past years, mainly due to inadequate funding and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
TB is one of the biggest killer diseases especially among people living with HIV with close to 28 000 people falling ill to TB daily and nearly 4 000 people losing their lives to the preventable and curable disease.
Although TB treatment and care is free in the country, more than 80 percent of those in need of TB services face catastrophic costs in trying access services thus leading to low notifications in some areas.
Speaking during a Stop TB Partnership media cafe in Harare yesterday, The Union Zimbabwe Trust executive director, Dr Ronald Ncube, said there was still a lot to be done for the country to end TB by 2030.
“Over the years, we have seen a significant reduction in the incidence of TB with the rate of new infections going down over 400 per every 100 000 people in 2010 to 200 per every 100 000 people. Recently the country was delisted among the top 30 high burden countries for TB, but we are still among those that have high co-infections of TB and HIV, and among those that have high burden of drug resistant TB. We have been delisted but we are still concerned and we have much to do,” he said. Dr Ncube said most of the successes that had been recorded could be attributed to the successful anti-retroviral programme being rolled out and also the cocktail of interventions that have come through from development partners in addressing the TB response.
He said the Covid-19 pandemic had continued to pose a threat to the national TB response both in terms of reduced diagnosis and funding for interventions.
He added that the previous Covid-19 lockdown restrictions that had been imposed resulted in many TB patients not being diagnosed on time.
“The restrictions meant people in need of TB services were reluctant to visit clinics since Covid-19 symptoms mimicked TB and they were afraid of testing positive so we saw a reduction in the notifications of TB cases annually. This may also be related to the stigma associated with contracting Covid-19 so many of them ended up dying silently with TB,” he said. Dr Ncube said globally there was a funding gap for TB with Zimbabwe still missing half its annual needs to comprehensively address TB.
He said although the country had a strong investment appetite from development partners, there was a lot that could be done to mobilise resources on the domestic market.
“We have been with TB for long but everyone is diverting funds towards Covid-19, but the onus is on us to make a stand and fight for TB. We have pooled initiatives such as the Health levy and the Aids levy and these are opportunities we can reconcile and ring fence for more funding towards TB-specific interventions.
There is a lot that the corporate can also do and the mining sector where we have a challenge of TB within the mines. We are still a long way from meeting the annual needs of the national TB response and we can mobilise domestically beyond just looking at international financing,” he added.
WHO national professional officer for tuberculosis and leprosy, Dr Mkhokheli Ngwenya, said it was important for the Government to prioritise ending TB.
He said the targets for TB treatment success rate were at 90 percent but these had not been met in 2021 as the success rate stood at 85 percent.
“Our major contributor to bad outcomes is death. Nearly 25 percent of our patients died,” he said.
He reiterated the importance of giving TB as much attention as was given to Covid-19.
“TB kills more than 1,5 million people every year and that is a significant number over the years that TB has been around for. TB was there even in ancient times but we are still struggling until now to end it, people are still dying and will continue to die. We have lost more people globally to TB than we have to Covid-19. We need to raise awareness for TB as much as we did on Covid if we are to increase our response to TB,” he said.
Online Reporter