Several countries in eastern Africa have a high incidence of tuberculosis but have yet to develop effective national strategies to curtail the disease, the United Nations World Health Organization said in its 2007 global TB report, ?Global tuberculosis control – surveillance, planning, financing?.
Citing Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Tanzania as among the 22 countries with a high tuberculosis burden, the WHO said their national plans were not effective enough to combat it.
Nigeria and Mozambique are the other African countries on the list.
“Plans for human resource development made by national TB control programmes in 2005-2006 were highly variable in quality. In particular, seven of the 22 high-burden countries, including five African countries, had plans that were limited in scope or underdeveloped,” WHO said.
According to the report, HIV testing for TB patients was rising quickly in Africa, but little effort was being made to screen HIV-positive people for TB, although that was a relatively efficient method of finding new cases of tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is primarily an infection of the lungs, but any organ system is susceptible, so its manifestations may be varied. Effective therapy and methods of control and prevention of tuberculosis have been developed, but the disease remains a major cause of mortality and morbidity throughout the world. The treatment of tuberculosis has been complicated by the emergence of drug-resistant organisms, including multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis, especially in those with HIV infection.