Alcohol abuse and under nutrition increasing TB mortality and morbidity in Africa

By Kuda Pembere

AFRICA must also address the issue of undernourishment to prevent mortality in TB patients, a tuberculosis World Health Organization Africa regional office official  has said.

Head of the Green Light Committee for TB at WHO Afro Dr Jean-Louis Abena told delegates during a session at the ICASA conference that the issue of undernutrition and alcohol use disorder are proving to be a thorn in the flesh for the continent.

“But this year, undernutrition becomes one of the most contributing factor that make people become ill in TB. And we don’t know how to fight against undernutrition.

“So it’s beyond the health sector. This is one big challenge. For HIV, we are pushing. Alcohol use disorder is also emerging, but it’s also complex.

“Maybe let’s fight against HIV, it’s still the biggest one, and under nutrition, we are going to put on multistructural strategies to tackle that determinant,” he said.

He also noted that while South Africa is still among the countries with the highest TB burden in Africa, they have made some headways in reducing TB incidence. Nigeria, DRC and South Africa and Ethiopia, Kenya account for almost 80%, 70% of the TB incidents in Africa.

‘And now we are in the, our incidence now is 200 and 205, 207 per 100,000 inhabitants. This is the milestone that of 2020 when we met the incidence reduction.

“And this is the list of countries that reduced the incidence. You see South Africa in the list. They reduced the incidence, but the incidence is still high in that country. But the indicator was to reduce by 5% per year since the year 2015, to the year 2023 on incidence. So we have achieved this for this country,” he said.

Regarding the reduction of TB mortality in Africa, Dr Abena noted that they have managed to reduce them to under 500 000.

‘And for mortality, we have also made some progress. So this is the number of deaths that are related to TB in our region. We came from close to 900,000 deaths in the region to less than 500,000 deaths in the region.

“So this is where we are coming from. But the goal is really ambitious, less than 70,000 deaths by the year 2013. We have to fight against this high mortality. And the mortality is very high among the people who are living with HIV. Maybe we need to put on the top of the agenda the directive of WHO on care of advanced HIV disease,” he said.

He noted that while there are some priority countries with high TB incidence which need much focus, countries off the list should not be left out.

“But these are priority countries. In terms of elimination, those low burden countries deserve also attention because they will be the first to declare the elimination.

“So we need to make smart plan for those small island insular country so that they will become the first to declare the epidemic out under control and then we declare some subsistence at the level of Afro,” Dr Abena said.

 

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