Akin Abayomi, Lagos State commissioner for health has disclosed that more than 50,000 cases of tuberculosis go undetected annually in the state, a situation that is crippling the fight against the disease.
The commissioner, while noting that Lagos state is the epicentre of tuberculosis — the top infectious killer in world, said the state accounted for 11 percent of the total cases in Nigeria in 2021. With this, he stated that Lagos should be identifying about 65,000 new cases of TB annually, but there’s a concerning gap in case finding.
“We only managed to detect 13,000 thereabout in 2021, that means that there is a deficit of people living in Lagos who have TB,” he said at a virtual event tagged; “2022 World TB Day Webinar; Private Sector Collaboration”, organised by Stop TB Partnership Nigeria in collaboration with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), and Anadach Consulting Limited.
Of the13,000 cases detected in 2021, Abayomi disclosed that 6 percent of new cases are drug resistant TB.
“It even gets worse when you look at previously treated tuberculosis cases. When we were monitoring them, we found out that up to 32 percent have now developed drug resistant TB,” he said.
“In order words, we have not eliminated the TB and the bacteria have developed some mutations which makes it resistant to the standard treatment. Therefore, we need another treatment which is very expensive, takes longer with more side effects and toxicity to the patient.”
The commissioner further disclosed that the state has a slight funding gap. According to him, N737. 9 million is needed to tackle the scourge in 2002, but N512 million was budgeted by the government, and donor partners contributed about N105 million , leaving the state a funding gap of N120 million.
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Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Governor of Lagos state expressed concerns that the scourge will have a significant effect on the Lagos state economy. He also stressed that detecting new cases is a huge challenge.
“The statistics on TB are worrying. 11 percent of the total national challenge occurs in Lagos. We have the highest burden of not being able to detect the cases, and unfortunately, we might still be carrying that burden as the epicentre for a while, also because of our population, that’s the concern. The biggest challenge is how we can identify new cases because it presents symptoms like other diseases and can easily go undetected,” the governor said.
Sanwo-Olu however informed that since 2015, the state has recorded a yearly increase in reported cases, except in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “So this means that there is something we are doing on case finding, we just need to do it a lot more faster”, he added.
Niyi Yusuf, Vice Chair, NESG Board , in his opening remarks, said Nigeria have not made much progress in the eradication of TB, hence, the dialogue is designed to intensify a total towards eradicating the scourge and deepen private sector participation.
The vice chair, while also stressing that significant gap still exists said, “We need to increase case detection, treatment and improve funding, this burden affects labour productivity and the economy. Today’s public-private dialogue will help facilitate the involvement of key stakeholders and engage the private sector towards the eradication of TB,” he added.
Tuberculosis is a contagious disease caused by a bacterium that often affects the lungs. It is the top infectious killer in the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Nigeria has the highest burden in Africa and ranks 6th among the 30 countries with the highest burden of the disease globally.
According to the available statistics, 245,000 persons died from the disease in 2019, while over 300,000 cases were undetected in Nigeria. Globally, 1.5 million persons died from the infection in the same year.
