March 26, 2021
By: Francis F.M.Harding
Sierra Leone has joined its partners on the 24th March to commemorate the World Tuberculosis (TB) Day. The day is to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of TB, and step up efforts to end this epidemic disease globally.
While launching the World TB Day, the Deputy Minister of Health and Sanitation (1) Dr. Augustine Anthony Sandi, said the main objective of this commemoration ceremony, is to raise public awareness about the negative effect s on health, social and economic consequences of TB and to step up efforts to put an end to this global disease. Dr.Sandi, added that, TB remains one of World’s deadliest illness. Each year, over 1.4 million people lose their lives to TB, and about 10 million people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease.
Dr. Sandi furthered that, more than 180 Health facilities do provide TB diagnostic services and the services are going to be expanded to more facilities with the support from Global Fund. Currently the country has achieved an appreciable TB treatment coverage of 77 percent as compared to 22 percent baseline in 2000.
The Program Manager for the National Leprosy Tuberculosis Control Program at the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, Dr. Alhassan Sesay said every year in Sierra Leone about 23,000 people develop the disease, approximately 3000 of them are children and more than 13 percent of the TB cases are co-infected with HIV.
He furthered that global efforts to combat TB have saved an estimated 63 million lives since 2000.
Dr. Sesay added that the theme for this year World TB Day “The Clock is Ticking” Conveys the sense that the World is running out of time to act on the commitments to end TB made by global leaders.
The date marks the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB, which opened the way towards diagnosing and curing this disease.