Hospital starts project to back TB detection

THE West New Britain health authority has launched the cough triage programme to improve its TB case detection rates in the province, says chairman Dr Mathias Sapuri.
Sapuri said the initiative was incorporated into the rural outreach programmes of the hospital with the goal of reducing the disease burden.
Cough triage programme is identifying general patients who have cough for more than two weeks, get them tested for TB and place them on treatment immediately if their results are positive.
“TB remains a major public health threat in Papua New Guinea, TB kills more people in PNG than any other infectious diseases,” Sapuri said.
“The incidence rate 417 per 100,000 of TB is the highest in the western Pacific region and 10th highest globally.”
Sapuri said TB had extraordinary social and economic impacts and investing in TB was the most cost-effective investment for a country’s development.
Sapuri said recent reports indicated that there was still ongoing transmission of TB within communities and households.
“As shown by the high occurrence of smear-positive TB among the economically productive age group (15-39) and by high numbers of children diagnosed with TB,” he said.
“The treatment success rate of new smear-positive cases continue to remain low over the years and in 2014 the treatment success rate was 67 per cent only,”
Sapuri said the loss to follow up and cases not evaluated were major reasons for the low success rate.
He said that a large population-based drug resistance survey conducted in four provinces (National Capital District, Madang, Morobe and Western) indicated a MDR-TB prevalence of 2.7 per cent among new TB cases and 19.1 per cent among retreatment cases.