The wife of Nigerian President, Mrs. Aisha Buhari has called on well-meaning Nigerians, corporate bodies and international development partners to join forces together in the fight against tuberculosis in Nigeria.
She made the appeal while speaking at the National Tuberculosis Conference in Abuja on Tuesday.
Mrs. Buhari who was represented at the occasion by the wife of the country"s Vice President, Dolapo Osinbajo said the conference came at a time Nigeria needed to pay more attention to issues of tuberculosis as it has become the most dangerous disease in the world.
Nigeria currently has the highest number of tuberculosis cases in Africa and the third highest in the world.
Statistics shows that over 600, 000 become infected with tuberculosis every year in Nigeria.
Nigeria is having one of the lowest detecting rate in the world and she is only detecting just 17 percent of tuberculosis cases.
The wife of the President who lamented that so many Nigerians are dying from the preventable and curable disease, insisted that the government in collaboration with development partners will do all that is needed to change the situation.
Also speaking at the occasion, Prof. Lovett Lawson said since Nigerians were one of the most traveled in the world, defeating tuberculosis in Nigeria will translate to victory globally.
On his part, USAID Mission Director in Nigeria, Mike Harvey said the US has deployed $128million to fight tuberculosis in Nigeria since 2003 which is their biggest investment on the disease.
"In 2015, US government lunched both the 2015 and 2019 global TB strategy as well as national action plan to combat drug resistant tb and in these plans, we identify Nigeria as our priority country", he added.
While calling on more commitment from Nigeria, he lamented that 68 percent of the national tuberculosis project remain unfunded, adding that from the 38 percent that have been funded, only 13 percent came from domestic funding.
One of every five refugees resettled in Minnesota by the federal government tested positive for latent tuberculosis in 2014, according to the states Department of Health.
Only 4 percent of the general population in the United States tested positive for latent tuberculosis in the most recent reportprovided bythe Centers for Disease Control.
SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER
The April 2016 edition of the Refugee Health Quarterly, published by the Minnesota Department of Health reportsthat:
Minnesota had 150 cases of TB in 2015, compared to 147 cases in 2014 (a 2 percent increase). The most common risk factor for TB cases in Minnesota is being from a country where TB is common.
TB screening is offered to all refugees during the domestic refugee health exam.
In 2014, 22 percent of refugees screened tested positive for LTBI (latent tuberculosis infection).
26 percent of all foreign born cases of tuberculosis in Minnesota were from people born in Somalia. Somalians almost exclusively enter the state through the refugee resettlement program.
More than 70,000 refugees have been resettled in the United States annually for the past three decades by the federal government.Its not just tuberculosis being brought in by these resettled refugees. Measles, whooping cough, diptheria, and other diseases that were on their way to eradication are also coming in across the borders of the United States.
A recent outbreak of measles in Memphis, Tennessee, a center for refugee resettlement, began at a local mosque, as Breitbart News reported previously.
The alarming public health report from Minnesota comes on the heels of news from the Centers for Disease Control that in 2015, the incidence of tuberculosis in the United States increased.
Data from 2015 show that the number of TB cases has increased (by 1.7 percent) nationally [in the United States] for the first time in 23 years, with a total of 9,563 TB cases reported, the Minnesota Department of Health reports.
As the Star Tribune, Minnesotas largest daily newspaper, reports:
The CDC is still trying to determine the reason for the uptick.
The goal set by the CDC, in 1989, of eliminating TB by 2010 defined as less than one case in a million people remains elusive. Even if the trend of declining cases had continued, the United States would not have eliminated TB by the end of this century, the CDC said.
We are not yet certain why TB incidence has leveled off, but we do know it indicates the need for a new, expanded approach to TB elimination, said Dr. Philip LoBue, director of the CDCs Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, in an email.
A dual approach is needed: continue to find and treat cases of disease and evaluate their contacts, as well as identify and evaluate other high-risk persons for latent TB infection, he said.
There may be a positive correlation between the increase in the number of refugees resettled in the United States during this period and the sudden increase in the incidence of tuberculosis, a disease that many thought was on the path to eradication in the United States.
As the Centers for Disease Control report:
In 2014, a total of 66% of reported TB cases in the United States occurred among foreign-born persons. The case rate among foreign-born persons (15.4 cases per 100,000 persons) in 2014 was approximately 13 times higher than among U.S.-born persons (1.2 cases per 100,000 persons).
Today four states California, New York, Texas and Florida have more than half the nations active TB cases, though they have only a third of the countrys population. The four states have the highest numbers of foreign-born residents, according to the Star Tribune.
A person with latent tuberculosis is not infectious and does not have symptoms of the disease.A person with active tuberculosis is infectious and has symptoms of the disease.
Ten percent of those with latent tuberculosis develop active tuberculosis if not treated, according to the World Health Organization.
As the Star Tribune reports:
TB is an airborne infectious disease caused by bacteria that spreads through the air, person to person, when someone coughs or sneezes. One in three people worldwide have latent TB, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, up to 13 million people have been exposed to TB and could develop the disease.
Every year, tuberculosis claims 1.5 million lives worldwide and 500 to 600 in this country.
Tuberculosis (TB) has surpassed HIV as the leading cause of death from infectious disease worldwide, the Minnesota Department of Health reports.
Tuberculosis is airborne and can be spread when a person active tuberculosis coughs, sneezes, or otherwise transmits the infection to a previously uninfected individual.
Treatment for tuberculosis is long and expensive. If caught early, it typically takes about nine months for a person with active tuberculosis to improve to latent tuberculosis. Not everyone diagnosed with active tuberculosis, however, improves. Mortality rates for those with active tuberculosis are much higher than health professionals would like, even in the United States.
According tothe Star Tribune:
Treating TB patients is labor intensive. To ensure that TB patients complete the course of drugs that lasts six months or longer, Directly Observed Therapy programs require a health care worker not a family member to watch patients with active TB swallow every dose. If a patient cannot get to a clinic, a health care worker goes to the persons home. The worker monitors patients for side effects and other problems.
Care also involves communication and cultural challenges. In Michigan, where the number of active TB cases rose from 105 in 2014 to 130 last year, the health department reaches out to Detroits large Arab and Bangladeshi populations. In other parts of the state, Burmese immigrants have different needs, said Peter Davidson, Michigan TB control manager.
Some local health departments have strong partnerships with translation services. Some rely on a less formal mechanism a private physician or someone on staff at the hospital who speaks the language, Davidson said.
The cost of treating an active TB case that is susceptible or responsive to drugs averages $17,000, according to the CDC. Care of patients with drug-resistant TB, which can result from taking antibiotics prescribed before TB was properly diagnosed, costs many times more: $134,000 for a multidrug-resistant patient and $430,000 for an extensively drug-resistant one.
Minnesota public health officials point to the high treatment rate of those refugees diagnosed with latent tuberculosis as a reason for optimism.
Eliminating TB in the U.S. will require increased attention to the diagnosis and treatment of latent TB infection (LTBI), the April 2016 Refugee Health Quarterly reports.Minnesotas LTBI treatment completion rate for refugees who start treatment is one of the highest in the nation at 86 percent in 2013, the report adds.
An alternative public health policyone that the United States used for decades in the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuryis to test immigrants and refugees for infectious disease before they are allowed into the country.
In that earlier era, those who tested positive were sent home. Today, however, many are welcomed in and pose a risk of infecting the rest of the American population.
(Note: Valley News Live in Fargo, North Dakota was the first broadcast outlet to report on the 22 percent incidence of latent tuberculosis among refugees in Minnesota.)
