tuberculosis iafrica.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from iafrica.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Technology can improve TB outcomes it-online.co.za - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from it-online.co.za Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
KATHMANDU, March 24: Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal today said the government would manage the required resources for the eradication of tuberculosis from the country.
Spotlight editor Marcus Low examines new information shared by the National Department of Health and assesses the state of the country’s TB case-finding efforts.
One of the most striking findings of South Africa’s first National Tuberculosis (TB) Prevalence Survey was that of 234 people found to have TB, around 58% had abnormal chest X-rays without experiencing any TB symptoms.
The survey findings also confirmed what many experts suspected – that tens of thousands of people with TB in South Africa are simply never diagnosed. Based on the survey it was estimated that 390,000 people fell ill with TB in the country in 2018 – of which around 154,000 never received a diagnosis.
Spotlight, one solution to this under-diagnosis problem is simply to test more people who are at high risk of falling ill with TB (for example people living with HIV or people who live in the same house as someone with TB rather than only testing those who report having TB symptoms. Such a “targeted universal testing” approach was found to improve TB detection by around 17% in one study. Testing in this context typically refers to testing sputum samples with Gene Xpert, a type of molecular test.
An estimated 390,000 people became ill with tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa in 2018, according to the country’s first-ever National TB Prevalence Survey released on Friday, 5 February.
The higher than expected number follows World Health Organization (WHO) figures published in 2020 that estimated that around 360,000 people in the country fell ill with the disease in 2019. The WHO estimates, in turn, were around 20% higher than its previous estimates of around 300,000.
Of the estimated 390,000 people who fell ill with TB in 2018, only around 236,000 were diagnosed. This means that an estimated 154,000 people with TB were not diagnosed.
Commenting on the finding that many people with TB are never diagnosed, Minister of Health Dr Zweli Mkhize said: “The implications of this is continued transmission. To break the cycle of transmission, we need to extend services to communities through outreach programmes and sustain infection-control practices from Covid-19.”