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Kenya: PS Launches Sh60m Drive to Screen Patients
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The Nation (Nairobi)
7 May 2008
Posted to the web 7 May 2008
Mike Mwaniki
Nairobi
The Government Tuesday launched a Sh60 million campaign to screen Aids patients for tuberculosis in public hospitals.
The campaign aims to educate health workers to also test TB patients for HIV.
Speaking during the launching ceremony held at Mbagathi district hospital, Public Health and Sanitation permanent secretary James Nyikal said out of the 1.2 million people infected with HIV in Kenya, half of them had TB.
Strong link
"There is a strong link between increased cases of TB as a result of the HIV and Aids.
"That is why we want our health workers to ensure all patients are tested for both diseases in public, private and mission hospitals," Dr Nyikal said.
Globally, the highly infectious but curable disease, kills about two million people each year and is spread through coughing and sneezing. In Kenya, a total of 117,000 suffered from the disease last year.
It claimed an estimated 74,000 deaths, an average of more than 200 deaths a day.
Experts have identified Nairobi, Coast, Nyanza and North Eastern provinces as some of the areas with the highest incidents of TB in the country.
The director of medical services in prisons, Dr John Kibosia says TB accounts for 40 per cent of deaths in the correctional institutions.
Currently, health workers are only able to detect 20 per cent of TB infections among Aids patients, Dr Nyikal noted.
"At the community level, people having persistent coughs lasting for two weeks should also seek prompt treatment and avoid self-medication using cough syrups," the PS said.
He also urged health staff to be at the forefront in fighting stigma and discrimination of TB and Aids patients.
Symptoms of TB include a persistent cough that lasts for two weeks or more, chest pains, fever and night sweats, loss of weight and blood in one's spit.
Last month, health experts warned about a deadly strain of multi-drug resistant TB
which will cost up to Sh1.3 million to treat compared with Sh6,000 for an ordinary case.
Patients undergoing treatment for the disease are to be injected daily for the first six months before completing their treatment in two years compared with six months it takes to treat the other strains.
About 289 cases of multi-drug resistant TB had been detected in the past six years, Dr Nyikal said.
The Government has finally bought a key vaccine whose absence had placed the lives of more than 200,000 newborn babies at risk of infection from a killer disease.
A consignment of 800,000 doses of BCG - which protects babies against Tuberculosis--arrived in Kenya last week, Dr Nyikal said Tuesday.
Public health
Speaking to the Nation, he linked the shortage of BCG since December to procurement delays in the Health ministry and the January violence.
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As a result, 240,000 eligible babies have not been vaccinated against TB in public health centres in the past five months.
On Tuesday, Dr Nyikal said: "Following the procurement of the vaccine, we shall soon send an appeal to mothers who were turned away due to the shortage to make their babies available for vaccination,".
The ministry procures four million doses of BCG vaccine yearly for 1.3 million new-born babies.
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