…Calls for improved TB awareness
By: Felix Ikpotor
A total of six thousand three hundred and sixty one persons were diagnosed of tuberculosis in Rivers State in December, 2022.
This was disclosed by Breakthrough ACTION Nigeria (BA-N), a non-governmental organisation in the forefront of the campaign for eradication of tuberculosis in Nigeria.
Dr. Edor Joseph Paul, Senior Programmes Officer II of Breakthrough ACTION Nigeria, BA-N, made the disclosure during a training for journalist on tuberculosis and tuberculosis related reporting in Rivers State.
He said the figure which is for the last quarter of 2022 shows a significant increase in TB cases from around 2000 to 6361 in a period of one year.
“Basically if you look at the Rivers State statistics on tuberculosis presented today, you would find out that the state made significant improvement in discovery of more tuberculosis cases from over two thousand cases to over six thousand cases over the last one year,” he said.
On how to know a potential TB patient, Dr Paul said if anyone is coughing for two weeks or more or anyone with lowbred fever, weight loss or drenching night sweat, such a person is a tuberculosis presumptive and as such should go for screening.
While lamenting the degree of stigma associated with the disease among the community people, he said, “we are encouraging community members, leaders and different stakeholders to begin to normalize conversations around tuberculosis, that way people with the disease will not continue to run underground and won’t continue to support the spread of the disease”.
On challenges facing eradication and awareness, he said poor funding and lack of access to some communities is hampering the effective discovery of persons with the ailment.
He called for improved media partnership to spread the awareness concerning TB.
” We also know that media coverage for TB activities is also a challenge because we need more funding to be able to put more jingles out there regularly, we also need more funding for media persons to be able to collect human angles stories that presents the real challenges that people face in the communities and present to everyone across the state.
“Maybe, here in Rivers State, we think that the reach of the media activity need to improve and at this level, a lot of effort is being done but more is needed for everyone in the villages to get this messages”, he said.
Dr Paul noted that the essence of the training was to bring media personnel in Rivers State together to understand the challenge of TB in the state and to collectively have a conversation on how to improve awareness around TB generally.
“In this conversation today, we are trying to make them see how important they are in the scale of things and how they can set the agenda for conversations around TB and the issues around stigma, so we believe that from this meeting today, more awareness and opportunities would be created and there are many other things we can explore to see that awareness about TB both in adults and children can be put on the table, that way, we would see that the number of cases the state has been finding, would likely increase because more people would be knowing about TB around them in their communities”.
On her part, Dr. Nera Khadiri-Ene, Senior Programmes Manager of KNC Nigeria for Rivers State, an NGO supporting the fight against TB, said the training was necessary to enhance the awareness around TB especially to the communities.
” Today, in collaboration with Breakthrough ACTION Nigeria, we are creating awareness to our communities and media people to say that, yes, we can end TB if all of us out there know more about the disease and the media are the ones to help us do this that’s why we have gathered them to see that they understand and are able to translate it to the common man out there”.
“The awareness we are embarking upon this time is going to transcend both the media and religious leaders and even community leaders because we are moving away from the health facilities to the communities to tell them about the TB surge and what we can do to end it,” she said.
The training which was organised in partnership with the Rivers State Ministry of Health featured presentations by other speakers such as Mrs. Nkoyo Umoh and Dr. Tina Oghani the Focal Person, Advocacy, Community and Social Mobilisation of the TB Unit, Rivers State who all called for support from the media in creating awareness about the disease.
