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Africa: Continent Has Highest Cases of Tuberculosis, Says Report
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The East African Standard (Nairobi)
24 March 2008
Posted to the web 24 March 2008
Edith Fortunate
Nairobi
Africa has the highest incidence of Tuberculosis rate per capita (363 per 100 000 population).
According to a new report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), there were about 14.4 million cases of TB in 2006 and an estimated 0.5 million cases of multi drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) in 2006.
Targets for global TB control have been set within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The MDG Six target is to halt and reverse TB incidence by 2015. The Stop TB Partnership has set two additional impact targets: To halve prevalence and death rates by 2015 compared with their level in 1990.
Among 11 African countries with more than 50 per cent of the world's HIV-positive TB cases for 2002-2006, the percentage of notified cases that were tested increased from 8 per cent to 35 per cent. Rwanda (76 per cent), Malawi (64 per cent) and Kenya (60 per cent) achieved the highest testing rates, which are also higher than the 51per cent target set for African in the Global Plan.
The number of HIV-positive TB patients treated with Cotrimoxazole Preventive Therapy (CPT) reached 147 000 in 2006, equivalent to 78 per cent of the HIV-positive TB patients that were identified through testing and 2.5 times higher than the 58, 000 patients treated with CPT in 2005.
The number started on CPT is less than the 0.5 million specified in the Global Plan for 2006; numbers could be increased if more countries emulated the high testing rates of Rwanda, Malawi and Kenya.
The number of HIV-positive TB patients enrolled on anti-retroviral therapy (ART) was 67, 000 in 2006, more than double the 29, 000 reported for 2005 and seven times the 9, 800 reported in 2004, but less than the 220, 000 target for 2006 in the Global Plan.
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The proportion of diagnosed HIV-positive TB patients enrolled on ART was 41 per cent compared with the 44 per cent target for 2006 in the Global Plan.
The outcome targets first set by the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 1991 were to detect at least 70 per cent of new smear-positive cases in directly observed treatment short course programmes and to successfully treat at least 85 per cent of detected cases. All five targets were adopted by the Stop TB Partnership and were recognised in a WHA resolution in 2007.
The Stop TB Strategy was designed to achieve the 2015 impact targets as well as those for case detection and treatment success.
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