Abuja – The Federal Government says it will adopt new treatment regimen that would reduce the treatment period of multi drug resistant Tuberculosis (TB) to nine months from 20 months.
Dr Gabriel Akang, National Coordinator, National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Programme, Federal Ministry of Health, disclosed this on Wednesday in Abuja while briefing newsmen on the National Tuberculosis Conference.
He said government want to reduce the pain associated with long treatment period and its side effects.
He added that the first eight months of the 20 months treatment is injection which is very painful and comes with side effect of irreversible hearing loss.
Akang said “we don’t want to continue to expose our patients for that’’.
He said there are two types of TB in Nigeria, the drug susceptible TB, which take six months for the treatment and drug resistant TB has a treatment period of 20 months.
“We (FG) are looking a shorter regiment for the treatment of the drug resistant TB from 20 months to nine months.
“World Health Organisation (WHO) had released guidelines for the new treatment regiment; we are going to look at how we are going to use it well in Nigeria,’’ he said.
He added that some of the drug combinations are currently in use in Nigeria, but there are few drugs to add to the regiment.
He said the National Multi Drug TB Committee would look at the drug and recommend how we can align ourselves to what WHO has approved.
The national coordinator said from the statistics in the National Programme Nigeria has about 600,000 cases of TB annually.
“Of the 600,000 we are only able to pick about 100,000 representing about 15 per cent of the total number which means that remaining 85 per cent were going somewhere to access treatment.’’
Akang explained that the purpose of the conference is to bring all stakeholders together so that they can help in identifying the cases and report to the programme.
“We want to increase the case identification rate so that at the end 2020 we can end TB in Nigeria.’’
Similarly, Dr Rui Vaz, Country Representative, WHO Nigeria, urged the federal ministry of health to incorporate treatment of TB and other infectious diseases while revitalising the Primary Health Care facilities.
He said the most important aspect is that we have the policies, strategies and the plans; what we needed is the implementation from government.
According to him, there is the need to increase awareness on the disease to enlighten the society more so that many people will know more about TB.
“We need to mobilise the communities to come to health facilities to access the free treatment,’’ said Vaz. (NAN)