Women Advised Against Steriod-Based Drug Abuse (Page 44)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah (Monday, March 17, 2008)
THE Programme Manager of the National Tuberculosis (TB) Control Programme (NTCP), Dr Frank Bonsu, has advised women to avoid the abuse of steroid-based drugs since that could put them at increased risk of tuberculosis (TB).
He said an example of such steroid-based (cortisteroids) medications was a common drug simply known as “P” and similar ones on the market which some women take without prescription to put on weight.
Dr Bonsu gave the advice at a monthly health promotion programme organised by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) for the public in Accra. This month’s programme, which took place on Tuesday, was on how to prevent the spread of TB.
He said abuse of such medications weakened parts of the human body, which gave way for TB germs to attack without resistance, adding that weakened immune system was a risk factor.
Other risk factors, according to Dr Bonsu, were diabetes, malnutrition, over-crowding, HIV, exposure to an untreated TB patient, among others.
He defined TB as a bacterial disease usually affecting the lungs (pulmonary TB) and said other parts of the body such as lymph nodes, kidneys, bones, joints, liver, testicles and the womb could be affected with the TB germ, adding that a woman who suffered from TB of the womb could suffer from infertility.
He pointed out that TB was spread through the air and also through coughing, sneezing, shouting, singing and talking by a person with untreated pulmonary TB.
According to Dr Bonsu, the symptoms of TB included fever, night sweats, fatigue, weight loss and persistent cough for more than two weeks, among other symptoms.
He stated about 80 per cent of people who suffered from TB coughed, a situation which made people associate the disease with only coughing.
Describing the disease as very dangerous, he said some of the names used to describe it, apart from TB, were Consumption and White Plague.
Some people, according to him, might not have obvious symptoms and also many people infected with the germ that caused TB never developed active TB. That condition, Dr Bonsu said, was referred to as latent TB infection.
He explained that an individual with TB infection might remain contagious and transmit it to others until he or she had been on appropriate treatment for about six months and, therefore, called for regular tests for early treatment.
Dr Bonsu stated that TB was curable and also free at all government health facilities and some selected health care centres.