Calls for government to declare tuberculosis a national health emergency

Public interest law centre Section27 has joined calls for the government to declare tuberculosis (TB) a national health emergency and made calls for the government to scale up the rollout of TB preventive therapy.

This after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Monday, ahead of World Tuberculosis Day on Thursday, that the global spending on TB diagnostics, treatments, and prevention in 2020 was less than half of the target of $13 billion annually by 2022.

“South Africa is bound by commitments it has made to eradicate TB. In 2018 at the UN high-level meeting on TB, amongst the states represented there, South Africa acknowledged that there is great urgency to step up health programmatic action and, together with other states, is committed to reaching at least 30 million people with tuberculosis preventive therapy before this year,” said Section27’s Patience Phiri.

“Domestically, we have the National Strategic Plan (NSP) on HIV, TB and STIs that provides a strategic framework to tackle TB. Goal 1 of the NSP is to accelerate prevention and to reduce new TB infections, which requires the roll-out of TB preventive therapy.

“We also support the Treatment Action Campaign’s calls to declare TB a national health emergency and pledges our support for the Treatment Action Group’s #RightToPreventTB campaign that makes use of social media resources to create awareness around the urgent need to scale up TB preventive therapy.”

According to the WHO, TB remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious killers.

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“Each day, over 4,100 people lose their lives to TB, and close to 30,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease.”

It said that the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic has since disrupted access to tuberculosis services.

TB deaths increased in 2020 for the first time in more than a decade, and the situation “continues to look bleak”, said Tereza Kasaeva, Director of the WHO’s global tuberculosis programme.

Professor Yogan Pillay, South Africa director of The Clinton Health Access Initiative, told talk radio 702 that there was more investment needed in ending tuberculosis by “investing in a vaccine and getting shorter duration treatments”.

“Before the coronavirus, tuberculosis killed more people than a whole lot of disease all together, including HIV, malaria. Globally, every minute, three people die of tuberculosis and in South Africa, we have about 80,000 deaths from TB annually.”

Deputy President David Mabuza shared these sentiments during his address in the Northern Cape when he led a TB commemoration day at Frances Baard and made an example out of the ongoing Covid pandemic.

“Now we know what to do to avoid Covid-19, and appropriate vaccines have been developed to protect humanity from its devastation,” said Mabuza.

“By taking Covid-19 vaccines, we would be protected, just as we will be cured from tuberculosis by taking medication when infected by the disease.

“We, therefore, commemorate this day to raise awareness about tuberculosis itself, in order to reinforce the long-established health protocols as part of intensifying our efforts towards ending this disease as a global health threat.”