ABOUT 54 percent of tuberculosis (TB) patients accessed treatment in Zimbabwe in the past two years as the country continues grappling with the disease.
The country last Friday joined the rest of the world in marking World Tuberculosis Day with fresh calls for investment by both Government and civic society as the country continues to implement strategies to end the epidemic by 2030.
World TB Day is commemorated annually on March 24, to raise public awareness and step up efforts to end the global TB epidemic.
Zimbabwe has made significant strides towards pushing back TB through targeted identification, prevention, and control programmes that have resulted in a decline in new cases in the past few years.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), this year’s theme, ‘Yes we can end TB’ recognises shared resolve to harness high-level leadership for increased investment, adoption of innovations, and multi-sectoral collaboration to combat TB.
“In Zimbabwe, 16 300 TB cases were notified in 2021, from an estimated 30 000 incident cases, translating to a treatment coverage of 54 percent,” said WHO in a joint statement with the Union Zimbabwe Trust.
In 2021, WHO removed Zimbabwe from the list of 30 countries with a high TB burden, but the country remains in the top 30 countries with a high burden of TB driven by HIV and multi-drug resistant-TB.
“While the country has made remarkable progress to curtail the burden of disease, and is now removed from the list of top 30 high-burden countries for TB, on account of sustained investments to strengthen the National TB Control Programme, and a successful anti-retroviral programme, the country still grapples with close to 14 000 missed cases annually, and a disproportionate burden of TB-HIV and drug-resistant TB,” said WHO.
WHO said over 80 percent of TB patients experience substantial high out-of-pocket costs and indirect costs such as income loss, when accessing services, an important barrier to life-saving treatment.
“TB in children remains elusive, with notifications in 2021 accounting for 5 percent of total notifications, against an annual global achievement of 10-12 percent. The situation has been compounded by the disruptive impact of Covid-19 in recent years, albeitwith signs of recovery as noted in 2021,” said WHO.
TB remains a public health emergency, with 30 000 people falling ill, and more than 4 000 lives lost each day globally, despite the disease being both preventable and curable.
“Our shared aspiration to end TB is a real possibility if only we harness our collective resolve to do more with less, targeting the finite resources more intelligently, to innovations with potential for greatest impact” said Dr Ronald Thulani Ncube, the executive director of The Union.
“To consolidate our gains and address the lingering gaps, continued investment towards ending TB remains a priority, from both domestic sources and donor funding, to bridge the funding gap in the current national strategy of US$62,6 million. Multi-stakeholder collaboration remains a critical enabler, building on the platform of the recently launched multisectoral accountability framework for TB (MAF-TB).” – The Chronicle
