Across sections of medical experts in the health sector have raised concern over the negative impact caused by the response against the novel coronavirus is having on the Tuberculosis treatment and case finding in Nigeria.
The stakeholders raised the alarm on Monday, during a virtual TB Media Roundtable, with the theme: “Impact of COVID-19 on TB: Challenges and Opportunities for Service Delivery, Policy and Financing. Nigeria is said to be third behind only India and China in terms of tuberculosis cases and according to statistics
every year, around 245,000 Nigerians die from tuberculosis.
The medical experts are of the view that Nigeria needs the same kind of Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 for effective fight against tuberculosis in the country. According to experts TB accounts for more than 10% of all deaths in Nigeria, statistics also reveals that every hour, nearly 30 people die from the disease, despite efforts being made to end the scourge.
Also the Chairman Stop TB Partnership Nigeria, Dr Ayodele Awe noted that despite the progress made by Nigeria to address the challenges of tuberculosis, case finding has remained a big issue. He said, “COVID-19 has affected the fight against TB negatively because we have not made as much progress in finding the cases.
“Nigeria is still missing 300,000 cases every year. We are only able to detect 25 percent of the estimated TB cases. Every LGA needs to have its own diagnostic tools. Presently, we have only 40 percent coverage of the LGAs with GeneXpert machine.
