Tuberculosis Claims 10.8million Lives In 2017 – Commissioner
Oyo State Commissioner of Health, Dr Azeez Adeduntan on Monday revealed that 10.8 million people died of tuberculosis across the world in 2017.
He alerted that tuberculosis is now on the top of infectious killer disease worldwide.
Adeduntan who raised the alarm in Ibadan at the weekend in his address to commemorate the 2018 World Tuberculosis Day, with the theme “Find and notify all TB cases in Nigeria” and the slogan “Wanted: Leaders for a TB free world” declared that in 2017 alone, many lives were lost.
The Commissioner maintained that presently. tuberculosis kills nearly 5,000 people every day worldwide due to lack of access to treatment adding that in 2016, 1.8 million people met their untimely death worldwide as a result of TB.
He lamented that, ”Nigeria now ranks fifth among the 22 countries of the world with highest TB burden coming up from previous 4th position in 2010.
“”Nigeria now ranks fifth among the 22 countries of the world with highest TB burden coming up from previous 4th position in 2010. This is the result of scale up and expansion of TB treatment centre as an implementation strategy across all states in Nigeria,” he said
The Commissioner disclosed that Oyo State government had commenced free screening and treatment in all the health facilities across the state for individuals with persistent cough suspected to be Tuberculosis (TB).
He stressed that the free screening and treatment initiative of Governor Abiola Ajimobi administration “is to reduce the spread of TB in the society, noting that all health facilities in the 33 Local Government Areas and 35 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) have been mandated and mobilised to effectively carry out TB screening and treatment.”
While urging that any individual with persistent coughing to visit health facilities for check-up, Adeduntan gave the most common symptom of tuberculosis as persistent cough lasting two weeks or more.
This, he added is accompanied by fever, night sweat, weight loss, chest pain, loss of appetite, coughing up of blood mixed with sputum and tiredness .
According to him, the spread of TB could be attributed to living in an overcrowded environments, poor hygienic conditions, indiscriminate spitting of sputum and poor cough etiquette, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, Diabetes mellitus and smoking.
