The recently-concluded Andean Group of countries forum held in Lima, Peru heard that Guyana was currently winning the war against tuberculosis (TB).
This announcement was made by Minister within the Public Health Ministry, Dr Karen Cummings.
The forum heard that in spite of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) causing a spike in the number of TB cases dealt with last year, the National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTP) and the National AIDS Programme Secretariat (NAPS) were working round the clock to heighten the Isoniazid Preventative Therapy in citizens living with the deadly disease.
Minister Cummings also informed the Andean forum that the best initiative implemented has been the provision of nutritious drink and food hampers. This is since the NTP began effecting a number of enablers and incentive initiatives in 2005. These initiatives seek to not only boost the health of patients suffering from the disease but to foster adherence to treatment.
“The case notification rate over the past five years decreased from 92 per 100,000 in 2012 to 70 per 100,000 in 2017. This is a good indication as TB has been on the decline significantly in key populations, namely the prisoners, children and elderly,” Dr Cummings stated.
She highlighted the improvement of the TB treatment success rates since 2005. The rates, which were just under 50 per cent in 2005, have skyrocketed to 78 per cent, according to the most recently available national figures. This improvement is as a result of the implementation of the Directly Observed Short Course Treatment (DOTS) in Guyana. However, the national rate is still below the target for the World Health Organisation (WHO) END TB Strategy 2025 of 90 per cent.
Dr Cummings said while the country’s strategy was to addresses social protection, poverty alleviation and actions on other determinants of the contagious TB disease, “Guyana will continue exploring ways to enhance the socioeconomic conditions of less fortunate TB patients by implementing ‘more robust initiatives’, which will target Pillar 2 of the country’s “END TB STRATEGY”, which are Bold Policies and Supportive Systems.”
The event, which was organised to help complement the functioning of, and assist in capacity building among national TB laboratories, also focused on strengthening the technical and administrative capacity of the three supranational reference laboratories in the Americas located in Argentina, Chile and Mexico, and fortify the national laboratory networks of the 20 countries of the Americas through technical and managerial skills-building.
While addressing the meeting, Dr Nila Heredia, Executive Secretary of the Andean Health Organisation ORAS-CONHU, noted that resistance to first and second level treatment of tuberculosis continued to be a major public health concern around the world.
“This space will give routes that allow us as integration agencies to contribute to this struggle,” he said, stressing the importance of having the presidency of MERCOSUR Health; the Executive Secretariat of Council of Ministers of Health of Central America (COMISCA) and the General Directorate of South American Institute of Government in Health (ISAGS) of UNASUR which are integrating mechanisms together with the ORAS-CONHU, which are expected to work with the same mandate of the presidents and contribute to the elimination of tuberculosis globally.
Also speaking on the need to strengthen the laboratory network and integration of the ORAS–CONHU was Vice Minister of Health of Peru, Dr Percy Montes. “This meeting means a stop along the way to see how far we have progressed on the issue of tuberculosis, what we are going to do together, what are the challenges and challenges that we as a State have to face in the future,” he noted while expressing that the forum would bear many results in the field of improving diagnostic capacity for laboratories.
