Kasungu district is one of the districts in Malawi which are doing well in the fight against Tuberculosis.
According to Kasungu TB officer Wongani Maseko, from July to September 2020, Kasungu registered 86 cases of which 84 of them have since recovered from TB which represents 98 percent recovery rate.
“I can say at a district level we are doing well in as far as fighting TB is concerned, in terms of case identification we have a number of strategies like sputum collection points, strengthening TB screening, public private mix (PPM) which include health facilities. We are also doing screening in mining and also small-scale mining sector. So, we are really doing good so far and during the quarter of July to September 2020 we managed to record 86 cases and out of these 84 were cured from TB a thing which is very commendable. This year, from July to September we have recorded 73 cases and out of these 11 were registered by volunteers in community sputum collection points and other cases were recorded in health centres,” said Maseko.
He also noted that the TB mobile van plays a big role in case identification because people do come in large numbers for testing.
“The mobile van is doing well because we sensitize the people and they do come in large numbers, you know in the van they have x-rays, Gin-expert so everything happens at once so screening TB patients is very easy. We are also doing awareness campaign though it’s a bit difficult now because of covid-19 but we have put a number of interventions and now just because people are used that TB and covid-19 they are not the same disease, they have started coming for TB screening,” said Maseko.
He added that the sputum collection points are really helping a lot in case identification and as a district they have managed to train volunteers who are working in these sputum collection points in their respective communities.
“We are finding a number of cases. The training was done in November but from November to this time we have managed to identify 11 TB cases. So far, we have 106 sputum collection points and 1060 volunteers in Kasungu district,” explained Maseko.
Fanny Kasiyaledi Matope from Matope village T.A Mwase, Kasungu was diagnosed with TB in early 2020 and started TB treatment from April up to October 2020. Now she is cured from TB.
Kasiyaledi told Malawi24 that after she started showing signs of TB she rushed to the hospital for TB testing and she was diagnosed with TB. After being found with TB, Kasiyaledi did not hesitate to start the treatment and she followed all procedures which the doctor recommended to her, and this made her to recover from TB and right now she is fine and living her normal life.
She urged people to rush to the hospital if they are noticing any signs of TB, to get screened for TB and if they are diagnosed with TB, they should start the treatment as soon as possible.
