The Ghanzi district has been identified as the hardest hit by the non communicable disease, tuberculosis, an official from the District Health Management team in Ghanzi Unaswi Segole said.
The Ministry of Health had set up a stall at the just ended annual Kuru Dance festival which was held over this past weekend at the Dqae Qare San. The stall was primarily aimed at disseminating information on Sexually Transmitted Infections, HIV testing, Safe Male circumcision and tuberculosis information dissemination and screening.
“We register between 250 and 300 tuberculosis patients annually and 35% of those are HIV related infections,” explained Segole.
He went on to explain that the manpower they have in place finds it very difficult to attend to this pandemic due to the distances and terrible road infrastructure between the many villages and settlements.
Segole further stated the importance of regular screening.
He said it is however impossible to cover all the people in their area because other than the distance between villages and settlements, there are people in this district residing in private farms, thus leading to late detection of the disease which makes it deadlier and requires more monitoring.
The cause of high Tuberculosis infection rate has been attributed to living conditions, ignorance about the disease especially for those treating infected family members since tuberculosis is a highly contagious disease.
The poor living conditions and poor infrastructure with little or no ventilation alongside consumption of copious amounts of alcohol are also contributors to these overwhelming statistics.
On a brighter side Segole indicated that there were initiatives in place which were set to address this fatal disease and to curb its infection rate. They have established a community tuberculosis care unit under which the people who are volunteers in a particular community are taught how to take care of the patients and each other.
They are able to administer medication to these patients from their homes. Segole further indicated that they’re always counting on help from advocacy, community and social mobilisation in order to intensify the directly observed unit.
