Africa-Press – Namibia. Health and social services Kalumbi Shangula says Namibia has reached 88% tuberculosis treatment success since last year.
Shangula said this at the commemoration of the World Tuberculosis Day at Onayena in the Oshikoto region on Friday. The minister said the country is only 2% short of reaching the World Health Organisation [WHO] target of 90% for all forms of tuberculosis and a 75% treatment success rate for patients with drug resistant tuberculosis which surpassed the WHO target.
He added that the ministry is seeing a decline in the HIV positivity rate amongst TB patients, from almost 60% in 2005 to 30% in 2021. Shangula said this signifies success in the provision of TB-HIV services and prevention interventions.
“These interventions include intensified screening, introduction of WHO-recommended rapid molecular testing for TB as well as point of care TB testing amongst individuals with HIV, all in addition to and the scaling up of shorter-term tuberculosis preventative therapy,” Shangula said.
The minister said despite these successes, there is more to be done in the fight to end TB in Namibia. “We are still ranked amongst the top 10 countries globally with the highest TB incidence rate, therefore the World Health Organisation estimates that we could be missing about 44% of our TB cases nationally,” he said.
Meanwhile, Shangula also said Namibia continues to detect and report Leprosy cases. He said in 2021, Namibia recorded 20 cases of leprosy. He added that the seven cases are less than what was reported in 2020.
“These are, however, all new cases, urging us to strengthen our efforts in leprosy case diagnosis, improving care and rehabilitation services to individuals affected by this debilitating disease,” the minister said.
Kalumbi urged all health regional directors to provide unconditional support to the nurses who are working as district tuberculosis and liprosy coordinators in all the 36 health districts.
“I also encourage all regional health directors to ensure that they take an active role in the implementation of the TB care and prevention interventions in their respective regions,” he said.
Shangula said the statistics clearly demonstrate differences in performance from region to region. “It is only through networking and collaboration that success can be replicated in all regions,” he said. The minister requested health regional teams that are struggling to draw lessons from their peer regions, to report the same successes in the future.
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