Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Feb 27, 2018 News
Guyana has seen a marked reduction in the number of tuberculosis cases and the Public Health Ministry has been making this laudable development known. Speaking at a recent forum, Minister within the Ministry, Dr. Karen Cummings, did not waste time to share that Guyana is winning the war against TB. She was at the time delivering remarks at the recently-concluded Andean Group of Countries forum held in Lima, Peru.
In her commentary on the TB situation, the Minister said, “The case notification rate over the past five years decreased from 92 per 100, 000 in 2012 to 70 per 100,000 in 2017. This is a good indication, as TB has been on the decline significantly in key populations, namely the prisoners, children and elderly,” Dr. Cummings told her counterparts.
Although the human immunodeficiency virus [HIV] helped to create a spike in the TB cases last year, the National Tuberculosis Programme [NTP] and the National AIDS Programme Secretariat [NAPS] are currently working on scaling up the Isoniazid Preventative Therapy in persons living with the deadly disease here, Dr. Cummings reported.
She told the Andean conference that since the NTP has implemented various forms of enablers and incentive initiatives since 2005, the most sustained initiative has been the provision of a nutritious drink and food hampers, which aim to foster adherence to treatment and boost the nutritional status of those on treatment.
Since the implementation of the directly observed short course treatment [DOTS] in Guyana, the TB treatment success rate of new smear positive cases has jumped from under 50 percent in 2005 to 78 percent, according to most recently available national figures. This, however, falls below the World Health organization [WHO] ‘END TB Strategy 2025’ target of 90 percent treatment completion.
Moreover, Guyana will continue exploring ways to enhance the socioeconomic conditions of the less fortunate TB patients, by implementing “more robust initiatives” which will target Pillar 2 of the country’s ‘END TB STRATEGY’ which are Bold Policies and Supportive Systems, Minister Cummings told the Andean participants.
She said that part of the country’s strategy addresses social protection, poverty alleviation and actions on other determinants of the contagious TB ailment.
The meeting was organized to strengthen the technical and administrative capacity of the three Supranational Reference laboratories in the Americas located in Argentina, Chile and Mexico; to help complement the function and assist in capacity building among national TB laboratories, and to strengthen the national laboratory networks of the 20 countries of the Americas through technical and managerial skills-building.
Meanwhile, Dr. Nila Heredia, Executive Secretary of ORAS-CONHU, who spoke at the meeting, said the resistance to first and second level treatments of Tuberculosis continues to be a major public health concern around the world.
“This space will give routes that allow us as integration agencies to contribute to this struggle,” he said, while stressing the importance of having the Presidency of MERCOSUR Health; the Executive Secretariat of COMISCA and the General Directorate of ISAGS of UNASUR which are integrating mechanisms together with the ORAS – CONHU, which are expected to work with the same mandate of the presidents and contribute to the elimination of Tuberculosis globally.
At the Andean forum, Dr. Percy Montes, Vice Minister of Health of Peru, highlighted the integration work of the ORAS – CONHU, and also highlighted the importance of strengthening the laboratory network.
“This meeting means a stop along the way to see how far we have progressed on the issue of tuberculosis, what we are going to do together, what are the challenges and challenges that we as a State have to face in the future; that means not only the exchange of technologies, but the joint effort to control our borders, thus avoiding to export to other countries public health problems that we can control … I am sure that today we will have many results, which will not only mean improving our diagnostic capacity in the field of laboratories” Dr. Montes said.
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