Influx of healing camps, bane of successful tuberculosis control- Doctor

Cape Coast, Jan. 18, GNA - The Central Regional Director of Health Services, Dr. Aaron Offei on Thursday said it was imperative that all stakeholders in the management and treatment of the tuberculosis disease co-ordinated efforts to facilitate its eradication in the country by 2015.

He expressed concern that most healing and prayer camps in the region were thwarting the efforts of the Ghana Health Service in its efforts to control the disease by making most tuberculosis patients believe that their predicament was spiritual and therefore needed to be healed at the camps.

Dr. Offei made this known at a day's workshop on tuberculosis control organized jointly by the Stop TB Ghana Partnership, Ghana Society for the Prevention of Tuberculosis (GSPT), Afro global Alliance both ngos and the Ghana Heath Service.

The workshop on the theme: "the role of traditional rulers in the millennium development goals" was attended by chiefs, queen mothers, opinion leaders and presiding members of the various assemblies in the region.

Dr Offei, in that regard urged traditional rulers to check the activities of those prayer camps and also educate them on the disease for people with the symptoms to report to health facilities without delay since the disease was curable.

He said although there has been some improvement in the treatment of the disease in the region as it recorded 62.7 cure rate in 2005 as against 48.8 percent in 2004, problems like low case detection, late reporting of cases resulting in high death rate and high defaulter rate which mostly result in multi-drug resistant TB were problems that needed to be addressed.

Chief Austin Obiefuna, country director of Afro Global Alliance said the workshop formed part of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and the first in a series to be organized in the West African Sub-Region.

He said it is being sponsored through the collaborative effort of the Global Fund, World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health to help control TB in the country.

Nana Kwamina Ansah IV, president of the Central Region House of Chiefs, who chaired the function observed that it was easier for TB carriers to contract HIV/AIDS and vice-versa and therefore stressed the need for the control of its spread.