By Sammy Lutta
Turkana County is on high alert over fears of a surge in tuberculosis infections, which officials say could hit 2,500 cases in a year.
The county has stepped up the war against TB with more testing kits that will be strategically installed in remote health centres.
The county’s TB coordinator, Dr Job Okemwa, said Turkana, among the top 10 high TB burden counties, recorded more than 600 cases in the first quarter of the year.
He warned that the county could report more than 2,500 cases if the current trend of infections is not reversed
TB is a potentially serious infectious bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs. It is spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
“Concerted efforts by both the county and development partners are critical in tackling the worrying trend. Statistically, the county recorded 2,278 cases last year that included 44 drug-resistant cases, up from 2,478 in 2019,” Dr Okemwa said.
He noted that routine house-to-house screening was among measures being undertaken by the devolved unit and partners.
TB is the fifth leading cause of death in Kenya, claiming 53,000 lives each year.
In 2019, health centres reported and treated 86,504 cases, of which about10 percent were children.
Drug-resistant TB costs have been on the rise, with 688 such cases reported as of 2019.
Turkana received a boost when AmpathPlus donated two GeneXpert machines for not just testing ordinary TB but also to detect TB resistance to one of the more common drugs.
The organisation’s chief of party, Prof Sylvester Kimaiyo, said the advanced technology detects the presence of TB bacteria faster and provides results within two hours.
“The machines, through the USAid AmpathPlus programme, were part of our support for the county government to embrace innovative care interventions and research non-communicable chronic diseases,” Prof Kimaiyo said.
Turkana Governor Josphat Nanok, who received the machines in Lodwar on Tuesday, said they will be installed in Lokori and Lokitaung’ sub-county hospitals to serve Turkana North and Turkana East sub-counties.
Besides helping to diagnose TB, he said, the machines will be critical for HIV viral load monitoring in infants and Covid-19 testing.
The county now has a total of seven GeneXpert machines, he said.
Others are installed at Lopiding, Katilu, IRC Kakuma and Lodwar county referral hospitals.
“The two machines will cut the cost of transportation of samples outside the county and reduce referrals from the two sub-county hospitals where they will be installed,” he said.
Health officials had raised an alarm over a spike in TB infections amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
TB remains a global and national public health concern. Globally, 104 million people are infected and 1.5 million die each year.
With nearly 2.5 million suffering from the disease and more than 660,000 dying in 2019 in sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya, in its national strategic plan to curb the disease, wants to cure at least 597,000 cases by 2023.
The plan, launched last year, also seeks to reduce the cost of TB treatment from Sh4,500 per treatment to Sh1,500.
Kenya is already making great strides. Between 2015 and 2019, it reduced TB deaths by over 30 per cent and new cases by 20 per cent.
Read the original article on Nation.
