Poor funding and lack of political will to end tuberculosis has been identified as a hindrance to ending tuberculosis in Nigeria.
The Executive Director KNCV Nigeria, Dr Bethrand Odume, who was speaking at a press briefing ahead of the TB Conference to be held in Abuja, said that funding constraints have remained the key challenge towards combating TB disease in Nigeria.
He said that funding for TB in the last five years has largely been driven by external sources.
“To meet the estimated funding gap along pertinent issues, there is a need to create an avenue to foster access to research, technologies, innovations and build collaborations and partnership for TB control in Nigeria.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had varying short and long-term impact on health including TB services in Nigeria.
“So of the direct effects on the TB programmmes reported include the disruption of access to TB Services as a result of prolonged periods of lockdown, treatment interruption potentially breeding drug-resistance, as well as the effect of stigma for both healthcare workers and clients amongst many others,” he added.
Also speaking on behalf of the Stop TB Partnership Nigeria, Dr. Ayodele Awe, said that the forthcoming conference will create an avenue to stimulate the generation of new collaborations for home grown TB research and innovation.
He noted that it will also improve synergy, collaboration and integration between TB, HIV and other services as well as create awareness and promote best practice in TB programming in Nigeria.
“Despite incremental progress in the quality of TB treatment and care over the years as evidenced by the 87% treatment success rate and 91% uptake of antiretroviral therapy (ART) among HIV-positive TB patients, the overall TB treatment coverage remains low at 27% in 2021, and case notifications have marginally increased in the past five years.
“This situation translates to about 75% of TB patients being missed annually. Of equally great concern is the increasing gap in access to TB services to the pediatric population and other vulnerable groups,” he said.
He also emphasized on the need for the Nigerian government to make resources available for TB programmes.
On the thematic areas of the conference, the Chairman of the Scientific Committee, Prof. Lawal Umar, pointed out that eight thematic areas would be focused on during the conference.
He said that the areas would xray topics surrounding TB in Nigeria and also encouraged scientists to send in their entries when submission of entries opens.
Tuberculosis (TB) is among the top priority diseases in Nigeria, as the country is one of 10 high burden countries for TB, TB/HIV and multi drug resistant (MDR)-TB in 2021’ as stated in the Global TB Report by World Health Organization (WHO).
Nigeria has an estimated 440,000 TB cases, of which only 117,320 were diagnosed and notified.
