World Tuberculosis Day: Mozambique registers 150,000 new cases, 30,000 deaths annually

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World Tuberculosis Day: Mozambique registers 150,000 new cases, 30,000 deaths annually

3:42 CAT | 22 Mar 2016

TVM

In the run-up to the launch of World Tuberculosis Day on Thursday, Deputy Minister of Health, Mouzinho Saide, revealed yesterday that Mozambique registers about 150,000 new cases of TB each year and close to 30,000 deaths annually.

According to Saide, Mozambique is among the thirty countries in the world with the highest prevalence of tuberculosis with implications for the use of resources such as medicines, equipment and hospital occupancy.

The Monday health professionals’ meeting debated ways to stop the disease which worldwide causes more than 1.5 million deaths among the 10 million cases registered each year.

Even with about 150,000 new cases per year, Mozambique is thought to diagnose only 40 percent of those actually infected, meaning that six out of 10 cases of tuberculosis go undetected and untreated.

Symptoms include night fevers, weight loss, sweating, coughing and lack of appetite, and the disease is closely related to HIV/Aids. Treatment for TB cases can take up to six months and cost 5,000 meticais per month, but this increases dramatically in resistant TB.

Over Easter week, the Ministry of Health is conducting screenings of miners and in schools and penitentiaries often host risk groups.

In 2006, tuberculosis in Mozambique was declared a national emergency, and actions to increase the proportion of cases diagnosed implemented. But tuberculosis remains a problem because of drug resistance and patients failing to complete courses of treatment.

Source: TVM