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Influx of healing camps, bane of
successful tuberculosis control- Doctor
Cape Coast, Jan. 18, GNA - The Central Regional Director of
Health Services, Dr. Aaron Offei on Thursday said it was
imperative that all stakeholders in the management and
treatment of the tuberculosis disease co-ordinated efforts
to facilitate its eradication in the country by 2015.
He expressed concern that most healing and prayer camps in
the region were thwarting the efforts of the Ghana Health
Service in its efforts to control the disease by making most
tuberculosis patients believe that their predicament was
spiritual and therefore needed to be healed at the camps.
Dr. Offei made this known at a day’s workshop on
tuberculosis control organized jointly by the Stop TB Ghana
Partnership, Ghana Society for the Prevention of
Tuberculosis (GSPT), Afro global Alliance both ngos and the
Ghana Heath Service.
The workshop on the theme: “the role of traditional rulers
in the millennium development goals” was attended by chiefs,
queen mothers, opinion leaders and presiding members of the
various assemblies in the region.
Dr Offei, in that regard urged traditional rulers to check
the activities of those prayer camps and also educate them
on the disease for people with the symptoms to report to
health facilities without delay since the disease was
curable.
He said although there has been some improvement in the
treatment of the disease in the region as it recorded 62.7
cure rate in 2005 as against 48.8 percent in 2004, problems
like low case detection, late reporting of cases resulting
in high death rate and high defaulter rate which mostly
result in multi-drug resistant TB were problems that needed
to be addressed.
Chief Austin Obiefuna, country director of Afro Global
Alliance said the workshop formed part of the Millennium
Development Goal (MDG) and the first in a series to be
organized in the West African Sub-Region.
He said it is being sponsored through the collaborative
effort of the Global Fund, World Health Organization (WHO)
and the Ministry of Health to help control TB in the
country.
Nana Kwamina Ansah IV, president of the Central Region House
of Chiefs, who chaired the function observed that it was
easier for TB carriers to contract HIV/AIDS and vice-versa
and therefore stressed the need for the control of its
spread.
GNA
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