By Dennis Udoma

UYO—President of the Nigeria Thoracic Society, NTS, Professor Etete Peters, has called on health professionals and allied bodies in the country to put more effort in educating members of the public on the ills of tuberculosis.

Professor Peters made the call in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, yesterday, at a symposium organised by NTS in collaboration with the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, UUTH, to mark this year’s World Tuberculosis Day.

Tuberculosis,   Prof. Peters disclosed, has affected about a third of the world’s population with mycobacterium tuberculosis each second of the day, noting that there was need for improved strategies to contain the disease including the expansion of what he described as “Directly Observed Treatment Strategy.”

Professor Peters, who is also the Chief Medical Director of University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, explained that, the presence of HIV/AIDS pandemic has further led to an increase in TB occurrence.

The problem he said has been further compounded by the emergence of multi-drug resistance and even more recently the extensively drug resistant TB.

According to him, “Globally, up to half a million people developed multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), with extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) reported by 100 countries,” adding that, tuberculosis is the single commonest infectious disease worldwide with an estimated nine million cases and 1.5million deaths annually.

“Though TB is a medical disease, it has a lot of socio economic confounders. There is slow progress in tackling drug-resistant TB – 3 and four drug-resistant TB cases remain without a diagnosis.

“TB affects the economically productive age group in the community, thereby affecting productivity. More worrisome is the fact that about one in three people with TB are never diagnosed. This means, they will not be treated and they will continue to transmit the disease in the community,” added.