Ministry of Health to eradicate common diseases

Sat. Jan 8, 2011.
THE Ministry of Health (MoH) will this year intensify its role of prevention, control and eradication of common illnesses and diseases including malaria, tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS.
This was contained in Ministry of Health (MoH) report presented at a Health Summit held in November 2010. The report dealt with programmes and activities of the various agencies and departments under the MoH.
Part of the report which dealt with TB and HIV/AIDS in Ghana indicated that, 991 TB patients tested positive to HIV out of a total of 4,191 patients who were tested for the disease between January to June 2010.
The figure accounted for 23.6 per cent of the patients who were tested within the period.
Meanwhile, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), has described TB as the leading infectious killer of people living with HIV which accounts for an estimated 13 per cent of AIDS deaths world-wide.
It said HIV and TB were so closely connected that they were often referred to as co-epidemics or dual epidemics. The epidemics drive and reinforce one another: HIV activates dormant TB in a person, who then becomes infectious and able to spread the TB bacillus to others.
For that reason, the UNAIDS has advised member countries which include Ghana to appropriately respond to both epidemics and avoid more widespread drug resistance, care and prevention of both diseases should be priority concerns of all TB and HIV programmes.
The MOH report indicated that, currently, Ghana had a record of an estimated 267,069 Persons Living With HIV (PLHIVS).
The figure represents 112,457 males, 154,612 females
and 25,666 children.
The report also said there were new HIV infections which involved 22,177 adults and 3,354 children.
According to the report, there were 20,313 annual AIDS deaths out of which 2,566 were children.
It pointed out that, cumulatively, 2,051,748 people had tested to know their HIV sero-status as at June 2010 and 6,390 sero positive people were put on anti-retroviral therapy (ART). That makes the cumulative total of ART clients since the therapy started in Ghana to 40,135.
On Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMCT) of HIV, the report indicated that out of 259,559 pregnant women who were tested as at June 2010, 5,201 tested positive to the virus which represented two per cent.
It added that 2,679 which was 52 per cent of pregnant women due to receive ARV to prevent mother-to-child transmission received their doses.
On TB control it said treatment success rate in 2009 stood at 85.5 per cent.
Meanwhile the UNAIDS, has indicted that more collaborative action was needed to widely implement programmes to combat HIV-related TB.
That, according to the organisation, could be done through HIV testing and counselling for all TB patients, screening of all people living with HIV for TB disease and provision of TB treatment or preventive therapy to all co-infected people.
It also advocates provision of cotrimoxazole and anti-retroviral treatment to all TB patients with HIV as well as, ensuring TB infection control in all health care facilities and high HIV prevalence settings.
Ghana’s median HIV prevalence in 2009 was 2.9 per cent whiles the country had an estimated adult national HIV prevalence of 1.9 per cent during the year.