World TB Day | Call to ramp up TB education in communities
Pearl Maduna, a medical nurse practitioner at Stratford Clinic in Orange Farm, in the south of Gauteng, told City Press about the challenges the health facility is facing because of the lack of health education among local communities.
According to the World Health Organisation figures released in October in 2022, an estimated 304 000 people in South Africa contracted tuberculosis in 2021 and 56 000 died from the disease. The WHO makes it mandatory for the public to be educated and made aware of TB, its symptoms, treatment and precautions against it.One major problem we are facing with TB patients is defaulting or not taking their medication as instructed, which gives the disease time to progress.
People staying with TB patients are encouraged to practice the regular usage of sanitisers and other forms of hygiene, such as opening windows for ventilation and wearing masks. “We often encourage TB contacts [family and friends close to the patient] to also get tested, but it hardly happens. [Former TB patients] also have a tendency of thinking that just because they had it once, it won’t come back, which is a lie.”
“We now even have a LAM test [testing urine to detect mycobacterial lipoarabinomannan ], a component associated with mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis], which is similar to how you test for pregnancy. That is more efficient because results are fast. If it’s positive, we send them for a sputum test to confirm,” she added.
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