Namibia achieved a treatment success rate of 85% for drug-susceptible tuberculosis, nearing the World Health Organisation's target of 90%, last year.
Despite this achievement, the Acting Chief Medical Officer for the Namibia National TB and Leprosy Programme says the battle for TB eradication in Namibia is far from over, as the country is ranked among the top countries globally with high TB incidence rates.
During the second conference on Innovations in Tuberculosis underway in Windhoek, it was revealed that the treatment success of patients with drug-resistant TB stood at 74%.
The country has maintained near-universal HIV testing for TB patients, reaching almost 100%, and 99% of those who are co-infected with HIV have initiated anti-retroviral therapy.
"Some people might not know this, but in Namibia, the government ensures that TB diagnoses as well as treatment are free of charge to all Namibians in the public health sector. So the government actually pays for all the TB diagnoses and also the medicine, and this is something we take for granted and we forget, but actually a lot of money goes into this, so this is the biggest success if I were to compare with other countries," said Dr. Nunurai Ruswa, the acting Chief Medical Officer at the Namibia National TB Programme.
He explained that as it stands, Namibia remains classified by the WHO as among the countries with the highest burden of TB, ranking number 11 globally.
"In addition to being a high-burden country, we also have a problem with high TB and HIV, so our TB in Namibia was mainly HIV-driven, so we saw a huge spike in TB cases when we had a big problem with HIV a decade or two ago. So this is the fire we are still fighting now."
However, Dr. Ruswa said more still needs to be done in locating those with TB, especially those undiagnosed, and putting them on treatment to prevent further spread.
"In addition, also one of our biggest challenges is the missing TB cases. It is estimated by the WHO that we are missing about 33% of our TB cases in the country. Why are we missing them? They are out there, but they might not have symptoms, so they do not go to health facilities. Sometimes they might have symptoms; they think they are mild, they won't come to the health facility, and it is also possible that some of them do come to the health facilities, but we fail to diagnose them when they turn up."
He said to find these cases, the ministry does community TB screenings and trains their health workers while ensuring they keep in line with the WHO recommendations.
"You heard our minister talking about AI used with chest x-rays. These are some of the things we are doing: improving the diagnostics. We recently launched a new algorithm for diagnosing TB, which includes very sensitive tests as well as better diagnostics for drug-resistant TB, which you will hear about in this conference, such as sequencing technologies, to detect drug-resistant TB among all the patients."
Dr. Ruswa noted that a conference such as the 2nd Conference on Innovations in Tuberculosis serves as an essential platform to bring together researchers and healthcare professionals to share knowledge, innovation, and strategies on developments and innovations in TB diagnostics, treatment, and prevention that occur globally.