By Joyce Remi-Babayeju
As part of activities to commemorate the 2023 World TB Day, the National TB Programme has taken TB Community Outreach enlightenment campaign to Angwan Sharo community in Karmo, a suburb in the Federal Capital Territory to enlighten the people about TB.
A Professional Officer of WHO, Dr. Enang Oyama told journalists that the TB community outreach is an essential part of activities for the TB Day which is aimed at partnering community leaders by sensitizing them so they can pass on the message to their subjects on facts about Tuberculosis which many believe is a witchcraft spell cast on those suffering the disease.
Dr. Oyama said,” TB outreach campaign is also to enable partnership with the community in TB case finding diagnosis and treatment.
‘It is a significant activity for notification for TB in the country because TB disease is found in the communities.”
“Whoever has TB and is not detected and treated will continue to spread the. disease among the people within.”
Oyama explained that getting the people informed about the presence of the disease and the community response is encouraging because through community mobilization people come out in Mass for testing and detection of the cases.
Furthermore, he said, ” The significance of the community outreach is because it adds to the overall TB notification in the country and even beyond the time of this campaign people will troop to healthcare centers to get themselves tested and treated.”
Speaking on the challenges of total TB eradication in Nigeria, Oyama noted that it is solely due people’s lack of knowledge about TB disease, so there is stigma which is making people to die in silence because they refuse to come and get tested and treated.
TB is not a death sentence. The best way to prevent yourself from TB is to ensure that someone who has TB is treated with the right drugs for the appropriate duration of six months, Dr.Oyama emphasized.
Assistant Director of Advocacy Communication and Social Mobilization Unit, ACSM, of the National TB Programme of the Federal Ministry of Health, Olajumoke Adebari noted that the government is doing a lot in treatment and control of TB, through the National TB Programme of training at both the state and local government level to raise awareness in communities through outreaches and dog centers.
Adebari disclosed that there are gene expert sites where tests can be done all over the centres.
Adebari dispelled the myth that TB is not caused by witchcraft and not spell on people, but it is caused by micro bacteria.
It is when people that have TB cough out or sing out and the bacteria comes out of their month and somebody has inhaled in and continues to inhale it within a certain period of time, they may come down with TB, Adebari explained.
The 2023 World TB Day is marked on the 8th of March, with the theme, ” Yes! We can end TB”.
