The Kaduna state Tuberculosis (TB) and Leprosy control programme has recorded 2,428 cases in the past six months, according to Dr Abubakar Sadiq, the state’s programme manager.
Sadiq, who stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna, said several strategies had been employed, in line with the Federal Ministry of Health guidelines, to improve the Tuberculosis indices in the state.
He identified the strategies to include active case finding through targeted outreaches, House-to-house case search, contact tracing, public-private mix intervention and other active TB case finding activities. The manager revealed that the state had acquired 13 gene Xpert machines for use in nine local government areas, and that the machines had cumulatively tested over 38,256 suspected tuberculosis cases.
With the provision of 184AFB microscopy sites across the 23 LGAs, the number of facilities providing TB services in the state had been scaled up from 43 per cent to 62 per cent, he said. “Tuberculosis services have been expanded to 50 additional health facilities across the state. This will continue until every facility is providing Tuberculosis services in the state”, Sadiq added.
The manager stated that the Tuberculosis treatment rate for the state was excellent, with about 94 per cent of the cases diagnosed managed successfully.
Meanwhile, the Tuberculosis programme has procured three level 2 biosafety cabinet, installed and certified at some General hospitals, in addition to 35 Olympus microscopes that were also procured and distributed.
Sadiq called on residents to avail themselves of the opportunity and get tested, when coughing for two weeks or more .” If you are coughing for two weeks or more, I appeal to you to go for tuberculosis test and if confirmed positive, you should be rest assured that the disease is curable and treatment is free of charge”, he counselled. (NAN)
