Tuberculosis: Nigeria treats over 1m in 11 years

The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, has said over one million Nigerians have been successfully treated for Tuberculosis from 2011 to date.

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The minister made this disclosure on Thursday in stated Abuja during a ministerial press briefing organised by the Federal Ministry of Health in collaboration with other partners to commemorate this year’s World TB Day.

Ehanire said the ministry with the support of partners had achieved great successes since the country began the implementation of the different World Health Organisation (WHO) strategies for the control of TB, starting with the Directly Observed Treatments (DOTs) strategy in 1996 and most recently the ‘END TB strategy.

However, the minister said considering the high burden of TB in Nigeria, there was still a significant gap between the estimated and notified TB cases.

He said only about 207,000 TB cases representing only 45 per cent of the estimated cases were notified in 2021.

The WHO Country Representative in Nigeria, Dr Walter Kazadi Mulombo, commended Nigeria for the 50 per cent increase in TB notification compared to that of 2020, despite the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic.

He said the theme for this years’ commemoration: “Invest to End TB. Save lives” and the slogan, “Give more, Do more, to End TB now” convey the urgent need for more resources to be invested to ramp up the fight against TB.

He said TB remained the top 10 causes of death worldwide and the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, with an estimated 10 million people having TB in 2020.

MTO/NAN