Late reporting affecting TB treatment in Sekyere - Kumawu

Late reporting of Tuberculosis (TB) to health facilities by infected persons in the Sekyere-Kumawu District is hugely impeding the fight against the disease in the area.

The situation has resulted in the drop of TB treatment success rate, which used to be 100 per cent in 2016, to 75 per cent in 2019.

Mr Lawrence Adinku, District Director of Health Services, who made this known said though TB case notification rate rose from five per cent in 2018 to 11 per cent in 2019, it was still below the 60 per cent target for 2019.

Speaking at the 2019 performance review meeting of the Health Directorate at Kumawu, he said late reporting of TB cases was one of the major challenges in the fight against the disease, which was causing many deaths in the District.

“Because most of the infected persons arrive late at the medical centres to seek for treatment, they are not able to go through the entire required treatment period before they die, a situation which is very worrying,” he lamented.

Mr Adinku, however, attributed some of the problems to long distances and poor road network, which discouraged many TB infected patients to regularly visit the medical centre at Kumawu, the District capital, to seek care.

He stressed the need for the government to post additional health workers to the District to enable them undertake community outreach programmes to assist infected patients with drugs and treatment.

“We believe when we have the requisite human resource and logistics such as vehicle and motorbikes, among others, we could transport the TB treatment drugs or medications directly to the infected families or persons in their various communities and villages, which are mostly in the hinterlands,” he emphasized.

Mr. Adinku said the District Health Directorate would this year embark on intensive screening of persons and families in all the communities and intensify public education and sensitization campaign on the TB disease and the need to seek early treatment.

Other strategies to facilitate the TB treatment success rate will be to maintain stocks of the TB treatment drugs at the four sub-districts which were Bira Onwam, Kumawu, Oyoko and Woraso, to help infected persons have easy access to treatment.

Community Health Nurses would also be made to distribute drugs directly to infected persons in their communities.