Kenya marks World TB Day

Kenya joins the rest of the world in commemorating the 2018 World Tuberculosis Day on Saturday.

This year’s campaign is dubbed ‘Wanted: Leaders for a TB-Free World, you can make history. End TB’ and will be held in Nairobi’s Embakasi estate.

Dr. Maureen Kamene Kimenye, head of National TB programme urged Kenyans to help with speedy detection of the disease so that all missed cases are identified for testing, diagnosis and treatment.

She noted that young people are also key in ending the epidemic that is the most deadly infectious disease in the globe, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The disease kills an estimated 1.8 million people globally every year, with six countries accounting for nearly two-thirds of the cases: India, Indonesia, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa.

Kenya also ranks high in the list of the 30 countries that carry the highest burden of tuberculosis in the world. A 2016 report from WHO reports that over 53,000 people died in that year because of tuberculosis.

“In South Africa, TB is the commonest cause of death and the disease is out of control in Africa,” said Dr. Keertan Dheda, head of the Division of Pulmonology at the University of Cape Town.

In recent years, drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis have taken hold around the world, posing an increasingly urgent public health threat. The strains often go undetected and are spread across populations.

However, there is renewed hope that new drugs will become available.

The World Tuberculosis Day commemorates the day when Dr. Robert Koch, a German scientist,  announced that he had discovered the cause of the disease.

Additional information by VOA