An estimated 25,000 people in Ghana are living with tuberculosis (TB) without being diagnosed, a situation that undermines the country's efforts to meet the World Health Organisation (WHO) target of ending TB as a public health challenge by 2030, the Deputy Programme Manager of the National TB Control Programme, Dr Rita Patricia Frimpong Amenyo, has said.
Speaking at the opening of a training workshop on Drug-Resistant TB (DR-TB) in Accra yesterday, Dr Amenyo said: "Per WHO's standards, Ghana is expected to find about 44,000 TB cases every year, but as at October 2025, we had recorded just over 17,000 cases."
She said provisional figures indicated that Ghana was likely to record about 20,000 TB cases by the end of the year, far below the annual target of 44,000.
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"This means that many people are living with TB in the community without knowing it and has implications for continued transmission, delayed treatment and contributing to DR-TB in the country," she added.
According to Dr Amenyo, TB did not only present with prolonged cough but could affect other parts of the body, including the spine, joints, urinary tract and reproductive organs, making diagnosis more difficult when patients reported late.
She said persistent back pain, difficulty in breathing or urinary discomfort might raise suspicion of TB.
Dr Amenyo appealed for increased funding, improved diagnostic capacity, additional X-ray machines, a strengthened health workforce and intensified public education to enable the detection and cure of more TB cases.
She advised the public to seek prompt medical attention whenever they experienced persistent cough, fever, weight loss, night sweats, chest pain or difficulty in breathing, stressing that TB was preventable, treatable and curable.
"There is no need to stigmatise anyone with TB. Once treatment is taken and completed, the person will be cured," she said.
The Executive Director of the National TB Voice Network, Mr Jerry Amoah-Larbi, expressed concern that although TB was curable, yet it continued to claim about 10,000 lives annually in Ghana.
"People are living with the bacteria, moving freely in markets, churches and public spaces, coughing and spreading TB without knowing it," he mentioned.
Mr Amoah-Larbi called on the government to urgently increase investment in TB case detection and preventive therapy, particularly in the face of dwindling donor support for TB interventions to save lives and promote national development.
TB is a contagious airborne disease caused mainly by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and mostly affects the lungs.
It is spread through the air when people with pulmonary TB cough, sneeze or spit. A person needs to inhale only a few germs to become infected.
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