Guardian

MEDICAL experts have raised an alarm that the Plateau North Senatorial district is witnessing a sharp decline in Tuberculosis (TB) detection in the zone.

This decline is attributed to the violent crises that have rocked the area in the recent past as the fear of being targets of attacks by unknown assailants, has gripped the inhabitants of the zone, who now decline to freely access health care in public health centres.

A World Health Organisation (WHO) representative, Dr. Sam Ogiri disclosed this during a paper presentation at a seminar on tuberculosis put together by the Plateau State chapter of the Association of Public Health Physicians of Nigeria (APHPN).

Represented by the state Chairman of APHPN, Dr. Joseph Daboer, the medical expert regretted that the WHO target of eliminating TB by 2050 may be a mirage if serious efforts are not made to sensitise the communities on the dangers associated with the killer disease.

According to him, it is alarming that in the last 40 years, only little efforts have been made in finding a suitable vaccine for the treatment of TB, even as he disclosed that the last vaccines discovered were between 1944 and 1968.

In another paper, Dr. Samson Isa of the Department of Medicine, University of Jos, said the fight against TB is gaining grounds, but the only constraint was that it is slow.  He agreed that not much was being done in the direction of drug production.

Isa observed that one-third of the world population is infected by TB, “but the worry in Nigeria is that the productive group in the country is the worst affected. This is the group that is expected to drive the economy of the country.”

He stressed that it is heart warming that new drugs have undergone clinical observation, adding that when eventfully they are licensed for treatment, the period required to treat TB patients would be reduced from between 24 months to just four months.

Students of Community Health and other stakeholders attended the lecture, which took place at the AIDS Prevention and Initiative in Nigeria, a United States Assisted AID/TB control project site situated at the Jos University Teaching Hospital, (JUTH).