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TB fight: ECSA has shown the way
2008-05-01 10:38:13
By Keregero Keregero
Tuberculosis is one of the major diseases that cause communal, national and international health concerns. Several international and regional bodies are currently busy carrying out research regarding the prevalence of TB and its socio-economic and political impacts. Staff Writer Keregero Keregero elaborates on the role being played by ECSA:
Each year there are estimated 8 million new cases of tuberculosis (TB) and 3 million deaths due to TB worldwide, most of which occur in resource poor countries, Tanzania inclusive.
About 9 percent of global TB cases are attributed to human immuno deficiency virus (HIV) infection, and was projected to increase to about 14 percent by the year 2000.
Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have annual increase in TB cases of 10 percent and rates of HIV infection in new patients may exceed 50 percent.
The situation analysis in the East, Central and Southern African Health Community (ECSA-HC) is not far from an admission in terms that TB still claims a heavy human toll though curable.
ECSA, of which Tanzania is a member, is a Health Regional Grouping comprising all East, Central and Southern African countries.
According to ECSA Health Community HIV/AIDS Publication No.14, 24-26 of July, 2005, Arusha-Tanzania, a significant proportion of TB patients in the ECSA Region are co-infected with TB and HIV.
It is known that more than 50 percent of TB patients in the region do have HIV infection. It therefore, follows that with the co-existence of the two epidemics TB and HIV programmes ought to be co-ordinated at all levels in order to ensure maximisation of resource usage and improve the quality of care, or else considerable resources would be wasted, more so especially in light of the fact that there is no focal person to co-ordinate the response to both epidemics in most countries.
That is not all. According to a report published by the Nation on February 28, 2007, the number of people living with ``active`` TB in Kenya is estimated to have reached 200,000 by 2005.
However, it says only 50 percent of the estimated cases had been picked by the TB control programme, raising fears that more people could be living with TB than those estimated. A further 70,000 is estimated to have died of TB by the end of the same year.
Further, a Draft Background Paper on HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis on East, Central and Southern African Health Community 44th Health Ministers` Conference, held in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2007, points that HIV has been identified as the main facilitating factor in the resurgence of TB.
On its part, the World Health Organisation (WHO) attributes almost 28 percent of TB in the African Region to HIV/AIDS.
In Zimbabwe, TB notification has been increasing at an average annual rate of 7 percent largely due to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS epidemic.
In Zambia, reports say that there is weak co-ordination mechanisms between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the government in fostering integration of HIV and TB services and stigma associated with HIV and TB.
In the circumstances, multi-drug TB is the most recent challenge in most African countries.
People who are already in contact with tubercles bacilli and HIV are 25-30 times more likely to develop TB disease than those who are infected only with tubercles bacilli.
This is because HIV reduces the immune system and the TB germs are able to multiply rapidly.
In Tanzania, where many people are infected with TB and HIV, HIV- associated diseases are now becoming common.
Thus, the prevalence of HIV infection in Tanzania among TB patients by region from 1995-1997 indicated there were 10,504 TB patients.
The prevalence of HIV among tuberculosis patients in Tanzania-mainland varies from 24.5 percent in Arusha) to 70.5 percent in Mbeya with an average of about 42 percent. Regions most affected include Coast, Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro and Tabora.
The prevalence of HIV positive among tuberculosis patients in Zanzibar was 21.6 percent. It follows that tuberculosis cases correlate with the prevalence of HIV infection in the regions affected.
In this regard, the UN Millennium Declaration was signed in 2000 by 189 countries including Tanzania.
This declaration was translated into eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) focusing on development and poverty eradication. Three of the eight goals are directly related to health sector (Reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
However, all of the eight goals, 18 targets and 39 indicators have in one way or another, a bearing on health sector goals.
As such, failure to implement some of the goals may affect the attainment of health sector goals.
Millennium Goal No. 6 focuses on combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, Tuberculosis and other diseases of local importance.
The aim of this goal is to halt and begin to reverse the spread of the above diseases by 2015.
But whether this noble goal can be achieved in the absence of the role of the mass media in the ECSA region, is a relevant but critical question that provocatively goes beyond the purview of rhetorics.
Tanzania government through the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare has acknowledged the noble role played by mass media.
``Mass media have a significant role to play in fighting Tuberculosis: It helps to set in motion, through information dissemination, the recognition of TB as a disease that can be treated and cured rather than simply treating it as news,`` Tanzanian Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Professor David Mwakyusa, was reported recently as saying.
It appears there has been an inadequacy of media coverage of TB issues as well as lack of ethical consideration in covering them.
Further, even the little coverage there has ever been has tended to focus more on clinical issues relating to TB other than the problems afflicting it in Tanzania and the social implications as well as the economic draw-backs thereto.
In the circumstances, it is high time journalists gave due prominence to stories relating to TB in order to give it a deadly blow.
For, the mass media is an effective tool in disseminating information by technical means to a large audience at once.
Both the print and electronic media have the ability to disseminate information to a large audience of different walks of life and at once that has made the mass media to be effective and powerful.
It is therefore, no wonder that with the ever increasing number of media, its variety no doubt provides an opportunity to meaningfully address issues that threaten the existence of mankind, including issues pertaining specifically to tuberculosis.
The role of the mass media in as far as the fight against tuberculosis is concerned, is to inform, educate, sensitise and also mobilise people to take action on matters concerning their lives.
For instance, a good number of people in the country came to be aware of the fact that TB is curable through reading newspapers and watching a health television programme or listening to a news bulletin or a TB radio programme, according to a report issued recently by WHO.
The media can also devise and pursue an anti-TB strategy aimed at reducing the rate of infection by promoting awareness in the community about TB to a level where most people would become acquainted with facts about it as well as HIV transmission.
Such awareness could help to inclulcate a sense of responsibility or duty among the populace in the prevention and control of tuberculosis and other epidemics like HIV/AIDS.
The mass media can also be used as a tool to disseminate TB information, particularly information that can empower people, men, women, the youth and the children to take action to minimise it or contain its spread.
Therefore, it is through information dissemination that the mass media can play a significant role in shaping and moulding attitudes, perceptions and values in society in relation to TB so that a TB infected person can still be regarded as a human being like any other despite the infection.
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