Tanzania sees 32 percent reduction in TB infections

By Halligan Agade

BCG tuberculosis vaccine vial. /Gettysburg Images

Tuberculosis (TB) infections in Tanzania have gone down from 306 patients out of 100,000 people in 2015 to 208 patients out of 100,000 people in 2021, a senior official said on Friday.

“The reduction of infections of TB is about 32 percent,” said Catherine Joachim, Head of the Health Sector Resource Secretariat in the Ministry of Health.

Joachim told a meeting that brought together medical experts to discuss the National Program to Control TB and Leprosy held in Mwanza city that deaths caused by TB declined from 55,000 annually to 25,800 annually during the period under review.

She urged health workers to use electronic systems in registering patients suffering from TB and leprosy to enable the government to obtain credible data.

Balandya Elikana, the Mwanza Regional Administrative Secretary, said the diagnosis of TB patients was facing a chain of challenges, including reluctance by private health centers to check the patients.

Elikana said out of 2,596 private health centers in Tanzania only 506 examined TB patients.

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