An amount of $700,000 has been mobilised by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in collaboration with the National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTCP) to conduct a comprehensive research into the extent of TB infection in the country.
The effort is to enable the country to plan effectively towards TB control and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals on TB.
The last time the Ministry of Health (MoH), in partnership with the World Health Organisation (WHO), conducted a similar study on the disease in the country, was in 1957.
The National TB Control Programme Manager, Dr Frank Bonsu, who made this known in Tamale at the national launch of the World TB Day celebration, explained that an additional $1.5 million was needed urgently to conduct the exercise.
He said the WHO had already spent over $100,000 to provide technical assistance to kick-start the exercise and appealed to the MoH to help raise the additional funds needed for the research project.
Dr Bonsu stressed that “Ghana must not fail to raise this amount in the interest of the poor TB patients and the larger society; the GHS research institutions and the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research have the capacity to undertake this important national assignment”.
Giving an overview of the disease in the country, Dr Bonsu indicated that last year, a total of 15,301 people were confirmed to have been infected with TB.
He said the figure represented five-per cent increase over last year’s figure of 14,536, while a total of 642 children were also diagnosed of the disease last year.
“The higher percentage rise of TB cases for children means two things; that our healthcare providers are now vigilant and that our surveillance system was working effectively making more cases to be diagnosed,” he further explained.
The manager announced that four regions did exceptionally well with regard to treatment of the diseases.
They are the Northern, Volta, Ashanti and Central regions. “Greater Accra, Western and Brong Ahafo regions were also astounding with excellent performance with TB treatment success exceeding 85 per cent,” he added.
In a speech read on his behalf, the Vice-President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, called on stakeholders including civil society groups to collaborate to reduce the prevalence rate of the disease.
“It is, however, encouraging to note that progress has been made in the fight against TB but we need to do things differently to accelerate efforts towards achieving the MDG’s targets for TB in 2015,” he said.
The Director-General of the GHS, Dr Elias Sory, called on the public not to shy away from going for regular medical check-ups to detect TB.
The Deputy Minister of Health, Mr Rojo Mettle-Nunoo, said over 30 per cent of all avoidable deaths occurred in Third World countries, adding that the disease affected mostly those between the ages of 15 and 59.
He announced that there were 1,059 TB treatment centres and 274 diagnostic centres throughout the country, saying case detection was one of the major challenges to reducing the prevalence rate of the disease.
The Northern Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Akwasi Twumasi, expressed regret that the region was expected to detect 4,541 TB cases last year but only 549 cases were detected representing a case detection rate of only 12 per cent.
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