Africa-Press – Lesotho. Elizabeth Glazer Paediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) held a one day workshop for media practitioners to equip them on information related to Tuberculosis (TB), childhood TB and provide progress updates on Catalyzing Pediatric Tuberculosis Innovation (CaP TB) project on Wednesday.
“The aim is to create awareness on TB in order to understand its impact, prevention strategies, and various initiatives conducted at communities and facilities with the view to identify new cases and treat them accordingly.
Media play strategic role in educating and informing communities on various topics including those of health. This project finds it necessary to ensure media are equipped with relevant skills on TB to promote demand creation for TB screening services,” EGPAF said in a statement.
EGPAF TB Advisor Dr Kiuvu Z Patrice stated that CaP TB project started in 2017 and shall end in September 2021. He added that the goal of the project is to contribute to reduction in paediatric TB morbidity and mortality. The districts involved in this project are Maseru, Mafeteng, Mohale’s Hoek, Leribe and Berea.
Patrice explained that paediatric TB activities are implemented in spoke sites (smaller health centre or clinics) and Hub sites (government hospital), “for Spoke sites, in community-based household we do contact tracing and screening. We do Sputum collection methods (expectoration and sputum induction).
In Hub-sites community-based household, we still do contact tracing, screening, sputum collection methods (expectoration, sputum induction, gastric aspiration) and on non-sputum based collection we do (CSF), pleural fluid, fine needle aspiration and chest X-ray,” he stated.
He outlined challenges they came across being evaluation of presumptive TB cases which is sub-optimal as sputum induction equipment is not optimally utilized, CaP TB forms are not utilized by some health care workers, particularly doctors, and clinical diagnosis is hampered by non-availability of radiology services, due to frequent break down of equipment and long down time.
Patrice highlighted that some of the achievements of the project include the participating in the review of the National TB Strategic Plan, Lesotho National Guidelines for Drug Susceptible TB and the TB screening effectively implemented in all the sites.
“555 Health Care Workers trained on management of childhood TB, 70 Community Health Care Workers were trained on development and implementation of pediatric TB clinical diagnostic algorithm Chest X-ray…,” he said.
Meanwhile EGPAF Communication and Advocacy Manager Makopano Letsatsi presented on how they have been working with families, children and with Lesotho Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS (LENEPWAH) to bring life into those families affected by TB.
TB is a contagious infection that usually attacks lungs. It is caused by a bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Statistics indicate that most children in Lesotho are missed when conducting TB tests as they cannot produce sputum thus EGPAF has started a project of assisting children with the provision of x-tray fees and transport.
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