‘How COVID-19 is affecting Nigeria’s response to tuberculosis’

By Doosuur Iwambe

The novel coronavirus disease otherwise referred to as ‘COVID-19’ is having a serious impact on the most vulnerable communities in Nigeria thereby threatening progress on Tuberculosis treatment and case finding, stakeholders in the health sector have said.

According to the Chairman Stop TB Partnership Nigeria, Dr Ayodele Awe, despite the progress made by Nigeria to address the challenges of TB, case finding has remained a big issue.

Speaking during a virtual TB Media Roundtable,with the theme: “Impact of COVID-19 on TB: Challenges and Opportunities for Service Delivery, Policy and Financing” held in Abuja, Awe urged lamented that out of the three hundred thousand new cases of TB identified yearly, only twenty-five per cent of the figure has been identified.

To this end, he called on the Federal Government to collaborate with the national tuberculosis programme to increase case detection of tuberculosis, while it simultaneously tests for COVID-19.

He said, “COVID-19 has affected the fight against TB negatively because we have not made as much progress in finding the cases.

“Nigeria is still missing 300,000 cases every year. We are only able to detect 25 percent of the estimated tuberculosis cases.

Every LGA needs to have its own diagnostic tools. Presently, we have only 40 percent coverage of the LGAs with GeneXpert machine.

“More people are dying of tuberculosis daily than from COVID-19. For COVID-19, it is acute but for tuberculosis, it is a chronic disease. Each hour, they are 18 deaths of tuberculosis.

The total numbers of persons that have died from COVID-19 are about 1,000. But for tuberculosis, each day 430 percent die from tuberculosis.

“Each year 157,000 persons die of tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is still the top infectious killer.

We need the same kind of Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 for tuberculosis’’. On her part, the Coordinator, National Tuberculosis Programme in Nigeria, Dr Adebola Lawanson, described as unfortunate that the transmission of tuberculosis has increased due to COVID-19.

According to her, most of the carriers infected other people during the lockdown. She therefore called on governments at all level to pay equal attention to other diseases just as is being done to COVID-19.

Also, the Country Director, Health Policy Plus Francesca Ilika in her presentation said state ownership of Tuberculosis is critical to the control of TB in Nigeria.

She also called for the inclusion of Tuberculosis in State Health Insurance Schemes for proper management, as there are other deadly diseases like TB, which requires an increase in government funding.

Tuberculosis (TB) is caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) that most often affect the lungs.

Tuberculosis is curable and preventable. TB is spread from person to person through the air. When people with lung TB cough, sneeze or spit, they propel the TB germs into the air.

A person needs to inhale only a few of these germs to become infected. About one-quarter of the world’s population has latent TB, which means people have been infected by TB bacteria but are not (yet) ill with the disease and cannot transmit the disease. People infected with TB bacteria have a 5–15% lifetime risk of falling ill with TB.

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Persons with compromised immune systems, such as people living with HIV, malnutrition or diabetes, or people who use tobacco, have a higher risk of falling ill.

When a person develops active TB disease, the symptoms (such as cough, fever, night sweats, or weight loss) may be mild for many months.

This can lead to delays in seeking care, and results in transmission of the bacteria to others.

People with active TB can infect 5–15 other people through close contact over the course of a year.

Without proper treatment, 45% of HIV-negative people with TB on average and nearly all HIV-positive people with TB will die.