The Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Fatim Badjie last Thursday presided over the commemoration of World Tuberculosis Day at the Ministry's conference room, under the slogan, 'Stop TB in my life'.
This year's theme for the commemorationcalls for a world free of TB and encourages people all over the world, from the youngest to the oldest to make an individual call for the elimination of TB.
Speaking at ceremony, the Health minister said the ministry over the years has made significant progress in the fight against TB in The Gambia and that the National TB Control Programme has made great strides in detecting and successfully treating the infectious cases of TB in the country.
She informed that the defaulter rate has significantly declined from 14% in 2005 to 3% in 2010and the proportion of TB patients who died reduced from 9% in 2008 to 5% in the2010 cohort of patients.She further noted that within the context of a recent Global Fund TB Grant- round 9 the Ministry of Health, as the principal recipient has successfully implemented activities which include scaling-up diagnostic and treatment centres to improve access to TB services and increase case detection, incorporating voluntary counselling and testing services in diagnostic and treatment centres and provision of food support to all patients and transport refund to TB patients coming for review.
For his part, Adama Jallow, programme manager of the National Leprosy and Tuberculosis Control Programme at the Ministry of Health said Tuberculosis is one of the public health concerns, as the disease affects mostly the productive age group with majority of patients being males. According to him,the annual burden of all forms of TB is estimated to be 4415( TB incidence of 257cases per 100000 population).
He further said the aim of the TB programme is to increase access to TB diagnosis and treatment to eventually achieve the maximum 70% case detection rate and at least 85% treatment success rate.
Commenting on the achievement registered by the National TB programme, Jallow disclosed that The Gambia National TB Control Programme has been ranked Category (A) 2 by Global Fund in Geneva for the satisfactory implementation of GFATM Round 9 TB Grant during the quarter ending, 30th June 2011.
Currently, he informed, the programme had refurbished 14TB clinics ( DOTS) and 14 laboratories across the country and that the number of new smear -positive cases diagnosed has increased from 1306 in 2008 to 1375 cases in 2011.