Poor funding and lack of political will to end Tuberculosis (TB) have been identified as the major obstacles to ending tuberculosis in the country, according to Dr. Bethrand Odume, Executive Director of KNCV Dutch Tuberculosis Foundation, in Nigeria.

Odume, who disclosed this to newsmen on Wednesday, in Abuja, added that funding constraints had remained the key challenge in the fight against TB in the country, with funding in the past five years coming largely from external sources.

“To meet the estimated funding gap along pertinent issues, there is a need to create an avenue to foster access to research, technologies, innovations and building collaborations and partnership for TB control in Nigeria,” he said.

He added that the COVID-19 pandemic had varying short and long-term impacts on health, including TB services in Nigeria.

“So of the direct effects on the TB programmes reported, include the disruption of access to TB Services as a result of prolonged periods of lockdown, treatment interruption potentially breeding drug-resistance, as well as the effect of stigma for both healthcare workers and clients, amongst many others”. he said.

Also, speaking on behalf of the Stop TB Partnership Nigeria, Dr. Ayodele Awe, said that the forthcoming conference on TB response in Nigeria, would create an avenue to stimulate new collaborations for home grown TB research and innovation.

Awe noted that it would also improve synergy, collaboration and integration between TB, HIV and other services, as well as create awareness and promote best practice in TB programming in the country.

“Despite incremental progress in the quality of TB treatment and care, over the years, as evidenced by the 87 percent treatment success rate and 91 percent uptake of antiretroviral therapy (ART) among HIV-positive TB patients, the overall TB treatment coverage remains low at 27 percent in 2021, and case notifications have only marginally increased in the past five years.

“This situation translates to about 75 percent of TB patients being missed annually. Of equally great concern is the increasing gap in access to TB services by the pediatric population and other vulnerable groups”, he explained, while urging the Federal Government to make resources available for TB programmes.

On the thematic areas of the conference, the Chairman of the Scientific Committee, Prof. Lawal Umar, pointed out that eight thematic areas would be focused on at the conference relating to topics around TB programming in the country.

Umar called on scientists to send in their entries when submissions for entries were opened.

The News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) reports that the conference theme is: “Sustaining a resilient TB response in Nigeria: Addressing the impact of COVID and other diseases”.

TB is among the top priority diseases in Nigeria, as the country is one of 10 high burden countries for TB, TB/HIV and multi drug resistant (MDR)-TB in 2021’ as stated in the World Health Organization (WHO) Global TB Report.

NAN learnt that Nigeria has an estimated 440,000 TB cases, of which only 117,320 were diagnosed and notified.