HARARE, March 25 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe on Wednesday joined the rest of the world in commemorating World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, with Vice President and Health Minister Constantino Chiwenga bemoaning the impact of the pandemic in the fight against TB.
In his keynote address during virtual commemorations of the day, Chiwenga said the emergence of COVID-19 in 2020 disrupted the country's progress in the national TB response, the state-run Herald newspaper reported Thursday.
He said this had been evidenced by a sharp decline in TB notifications for both drug-sensitive and drug-resistant forms of the disease.
"This negative impact of COVID-19 is mainly related to stigma and reduced accessibility to health services leading to delays in TB diagnosis and treatment initiation," he said.
Chiwenga said Zimbabwe's efforts and focus on COVID-19 should not make it forget that TB remains one of its major public health threats.
"The realization calls for expansion and acceleration of integrated approaches given the similarities of some of the symptoms and signs of the two conditions," he said.
Zimbabwe, the VP said, should redouble efforts to raise awareness on TB, enhance the community and health system capacities to reduce morbidity and mortalities from the disease.
According to the World Health Organization Global TB Report of 2019, Zimbabwe is listed among the 30 high burden countries for TB and HIV and multi-drug-resistant TB for the period 2016-2020.
Women of reproductive age group and men are mostly affected.
Chiwenga said faced with this challenge, the Zimbabwean government came up with several interventions including the development of a TB national strategy plan 2021-25 to guide all actors on the TB response priorities for the country.
However, Zimbabwe had made significant progress in reducing the burden as observed from the decline in estimated incident rate from 242 per 100,000 in 2015 to a rate of 199 per 100,000 in 2019, Chiwenga said.
He added that the TB epidemic in Zimbabwe is largely driven by HIV.
"As the country inches towards the last mile of finding missed TB cases, there is a need for more targeting of priority groups to optimize yield," he said.
Chiwenga also pointed out that Zimbabwe continues to suffer the scourge of drug-resistant TB, with 226 drug-resistant TB cases being recorded in 2020.
The government had thus decentralized drug-resistant TB services to district level to improve access to diagnosis and treatment.
The country had also introduced an injection-free drug-resistant TB treatment as the preferred treatment for all patients with drug-resistant TB.
Chiwenga said this year's theme "The clock is Ticking" conveys the message that time is running out for the government to act on commitments to end TB by 2035. Enditem
