The Department of Health (DOH) has called on Filipinos who have tested positive for tuberculosis to dismiss social stigma and continue treatment in specialty facilities all over the country.
The DOH raised the call following reports that around one million Filipinos were afflicted with tuberculosis.
Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa has announced that treatment period for the disease has been drastically reduced to the usual six to nine months to just four months are recommended by the World Health Organization.
“People fall out of this TB program, because after they feel good – there are no more symptoms, they don’t complete the courses,” Herbosa said. explained in Filipino.
He added that upon his appointment, President Marcos had urged a directive to address the problem of Tuberculosis in the country – with the Philippines ranking fourth among other countries which hold a high burden of the disease.
The Health secretary stated that most Filipinos who were being treated for the disease chose to discontinue from participating in treatment programs once they began to lose any of its symptoms.
“The first step of prevention is really vaccination – the BCG vaccine which is given to children upon birth to prevent primary complex. The second is good nutrition, the people who get TB are the people that are immuno-compromised – they are malnourished. This is usually the children in the poor communities. The third is the social environment.
In some poor communities, there are usually four families in one household – if one of them fails to get treated, it will spread throughout the household,” he added.
Social Determinants were also identified as one of the main factors for people to drop out of the program. “They are afraid to be identified by their neighbors as being ill with the disease especially if they go to the treatment centers. There is an old mentality that TB is contagious,”. Herbosa said.
Furthermore, the health secretary emphasized that the statistics of tuberculosis cases within the country are in an abnormally high ratio.
The health secretary also addressed the problem within the logistics and supply chain management for Tuberculosis medication within treatment centers.
“The medicines are being bought for the estimated number of cases, but from the warehouse to the centers, there is a delay. We are trying to fix this. The idea is computerizing the supply chain,” Herbosa clarified.
The Department of Health has begun diagnosis of the disease through artificial intelligence in their treatment facilities.
Herbosa has stated that the goal is to get the Philippines out of the Top 10 rank of countries with high cases of Tuberculosis before his term ends which he hopes will lead to freer mobility of Filipinos around the world.
The World Health Organization estimated 591,000 TB cases in the country in 2022, with the COVID-19 virus having interrupted its treatment.
As of 2022, there are 3,632 tuberculosis treatment facilities and 3,695 tuberculosis laboratories around the country, according to the Department of Health’s National TB Control Program.