The Bauchi State Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Leprosy and Malaria, BACATMA, has recorded tremendous breakthroughs in terms of control of Tuberculosis across all the 20 local governments areas of the state.
Dr Aliyu Mohammed Maigoro, Commissioner for Health Bauchi State, disclosed this in a press conference organised by Breakthrough Action in collaboration with BACATMA as part of activities lined up to mark this year’s World TB Day in the state.
Dr Maigoro said that BACATMA runs 570 free TB treatment centers in the state in addition to 127 TB Diagnostic Centers.
He added that BACATMA has procured 12 GeneXpert Machines for treating both Drug sensitive TB bacteria and drug resistant variant of the bacteria responsible for causing Multi-Drug Resistant form of TB.
The Commissioner explained that BACATMA is harnessing resources to create the “needed effort to reach those at highest risk for TB and to identify and implement innovative strategies to improve testing and treatment among high risks populations.”
Dr Maigoro, however, noted that there is need to lower sights on sustainability on the fight against TB amid decline in available global funding flow from donors to fight TB in not just Bauchi State but Nigeria as a whole.
“TB is still a life threatening problem globally despite the declining number of TB cases and anyone can get TB and our current effort to find and treat latent TB infection and TB disease are not sufficient,” the Commissioner said.
He added that in 2020, Bauchi State recorded and notified 4,430 drug susceptible TB cases adding that 93 percent of cases were treated successfully.
Earlier in his remarks, Dr Sani Muhammad Dambam, Executive Chairman BACATMA, lamented that the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted attention of global healthcare providers and donors from TB thereby creating an unfavorable condition in the fight against the bacteria.
He said that after emergence of COVID-19, people are afraid to report suspected TB cases to treatment centers in the state out of fear that it might be a ajuged to be the dreaded COVID-19.
The theme for this year’s World TB Day is “The Clock is Ticking” sounding that the world has limited time to meet the 2030 target of a world free of TB.
