GHS to roll out strategy to end TB epidemic

The National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTCP) of the Ghana Health Service is to implement a five-year National Strategic Plan to focus on TB control and end the TB epidemic by 2020.

The five year-strategy would conduct early screening, detection and enrolment into treatment for all forms of new cases, from the current level of 15,606 to 28,292 by 2017.

The Plan would also help increase the proportion of bacteriological confirmed pulmonary TB from the 51 per cent in 2013 to 55 per cent by 2017.

It would also detect and enrol into treatment all Multi Drug Resistant –TB (MDR-TB) cases, identified among the new and previously treated cases by 2017.

Dr Frank Bonsu, Programme Manager for NTCP, made this known at the end of a two-day international conference on the TB Situation in Ghana.

The conference considered the next steps for TB control in Ghana after the release of the recent survey conducted by NTCP, which revealed that the prevalence was three times higher than what the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated.

The WHO estimated that Ghana’s TB prevalence was 71 per 100,000 population but a new survey conducted in 2013 revealed that the prevalence was 264 per 100,000 population.

The conference attended by stakeholders from Ghana, WHO, USAID, Global Fund, as well as other senior health care managers, discussed TB burden and financing, the global context, the health sector response to the TB epidemic and resource gap mapping and advocacy roundtable, among others.

Dr Bonsu noted that the implementation of the new strategic plan would help the NTCP to attain higher treatment success for all forms of TB - from 84 per cent in 2012 to at least 89 per cent in new cases; and 60 per cent in MDR-TB cases by 2017 through improved quality clinical care and community TB care

“With the new strategic plan , we hope to reduce case fatality rates of TB/HIV co-infected cases from 20 per cent in 2012 to 15 per cent by 2017 and uptake of ART coverage, among co-infected from 37 per cent in 2013 to 75 per cent by 2017,” he added.

The Programme Manager, however, expressed worry about the challenges of human resource constraints, the health system’s inability to recruit adequate staff to deliver optimum care owing to a temporary governmental directive and high internal staff turnover owing to the internal re-posting of staff to meet general care services demand.

High competing demand on staff and workload that could lead to lower motivation for staff directly working on disease conditions potentially considered infectious like TB, ddelays in the procurement of health commodities, local and international exemptions from the Procurement Authority.

Other concerns, he said, are delays in grant disbursement, high staff attrition and the slow acquittals of funds disbursement.

“If these are not addressed, all our efforts will go down the drain and we will not achieve our objectives to make Ghana a TB free country,” Dr Bonsu complained.

Dr Leopold Blanc an international WHO TB Consultancy, called for the prioritisation of the implementation of the strategic plan and the use the existing resources to address the problem.

Dr Appiah Denkyira, Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, urged all the regional programmes to incorporate into their programmes the new strategic plan and ensure that they track, treat and cure every single patient.

“We are not leaving any stone unturned,” he said. “Ghana, with our new prevalence and the resources put in place, can make a difference and the time is now”.