Accra, March 25, GNA-World leaders have been called upon to increase investment towards finding a vaccine for Tuberculosis, a disease discovered in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch, a German physician and microbiologist, announced the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacillus that causes tuberculosis (TB).
Available data indicate that around the world, three people lose their lives to TB every minute but with urgent and increased funding, “we can put an end to the preventable and curable disease.”
Hope For Future Generations, women and children focused national and community-based non-governmental Organisation, which made the call in a statement to mark TB Day, expressed concern that the world had been plagued by the disease for decades and yet there was no known vaccine.
The statement wondered how much investment was being made towards the development of TB Vaccines to ensure that “this menace that is robbing the lives of adults and children alike is curbed.”
It said of the US$15 billion annual funding for TB promised by world leaders at the UN High-Level Meeting 2018, only 40 per cent had been made available.
HFFG said on the local scene, the Government, and other stakeholders needed to allocate resources towards the fight against TB to “EndTB by 2030,” while ensuring that the human rights of persons living with TB were upheld.
This will secure a plummeting of the stigma index of the TB situation in Ghana and wherever people were suffering from TB.
According to the Country Control Mechanism of the Global Fund to Fight against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (CCM Ghana), Ghana conducted the second national TB prevalence survey in 2013 with the estimated national TB prevalence of 290 per 100,000 population, showing that the disease burden was four times higher than the WHO estimates of 71 per 100,000 per the population.
The Stop TB Partnership survey of TB Prevalence between 2010 to 2020 also showed that out of Ghana’s population, 44,000 were estimated to have contracted TB with 6,600 of the said number being children.
Of all the infected persons, 14,691 of them have had access to treatment as of 2019 with 12,207 persons successfully treated.
In 2020, 12,674 were successfully put on treatment.
Ms Nancy Ansah, the Programmes Director at Hope For Future Generations, said that the emergence of the COVID-19 virus might have brought a shift in focus, culminating in the loss of some gains made in the past years in TB.
She further stated that it was good that attention was brought to investing to end TB which would ensure that lives are saved and preserved.
TB Day is celebrated worldwide to among others, educate the public about the impact of TB around the world, while the success stories in its prevention and control are shared across the world.
Awareness of the challenges that hinder progress towards the elimination of this devastating disease is also raised.
The theme of World TB Day 2022 is ‘Invest to End TB. Save Lives’.
The theme, the HFFG said, conveyed the urgent need to invest resources to ramp up the fight against TB and achieve the commitments to end TB made by global leaders.
This is especially critical in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that had put the End TB progress at risk, and to ensure equitable access to prevention and care in line with WHO’s drive towards achieving Universal Health Coverage.
The HFFG on its part is deeply involved in the fight against TB in Ghana and is one of the partners of Stop TB Partnership since 2009.
It has also focused on the Childhood TB plan and integrated Childhood TB education and referral into a three year Maternal, Neonatal and Child Survival Project in selected regions of the country.
HFFG used the occasion to commend the Global Fund for the immense aid given to countries in Africa to fight against TB and other diseases.
Currently, HFFG is implementing the TBImpact – Ghana, aimed at capacitating affected communities to lead to design, implementation and monitoring of TB interventions, as well as promoting accessible, equitable and quality TB services in Greater Accra, Central and Volta Regions of Ghana.
The one-year project is being implemented with a grant from the Stop TB Partnership.
Source: Ghana News Agency
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