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Health sector expands training to arrest impact of TB

Aug 31, 2012 News

In an attempt to address the surging impact of tuberculosis (TB), the Ministry of Health has been seeking to expand its TB centres across Guyana.
This is according to Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Shamdeo Persaud. He revealed that most of the country’s middle level district hospitals and regional hospitals are all furnished with TB clinics which are easily accessible to the public.
“We have done a lot of work with training health professionals…in fact we have training which is integrated into all our professional programmes including medicine.”
Medical students, he said, currently must subject themselves to lessons on TB and undergo rotations at the country’s TB centres. Nursing as well as Community Health Workers, Medexes, Dental and Pharmacy programmes all have a component which now addresses TB, Dr. Persaud underscored.
This move however does not in any way diminish the Directly Observed Treatment Short-Course (DOTS) programme where persons are specially trained to ensure that TB patients adhere to their medication regimen. “Part of their task is to go to the (patients’) homes where they actually talk with patients, their family members and friends so lots of the education work is done through this avenue.”
Additionally, Dr. Persaud said that the National TB programme through support from the Global Fund has also been developing peer education programmes where teens are identified and other vulnerable groups through their advocacies and communication strategies.
The Guyana Chest Clinic has already embraced such a programme and according to Dr. Persaud “our focus for the Chest Society is on two main groups – Sports and Faith-based organisations – so we are kind of working on those. We hope to expose them to basic principles on TB and get their own take on TB.”
Dr. Persaud, during a recent interview with this publication, revealed that there are currently a large number of persons infected with tuberculosis (TB) with some 800 cases being identified annually. This state of affairs he has described as “a little frightening” even as he alluded to TB being perhaps the only opportunistic disease contracted by persons infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Syndrome without any sexual contact. As such the measures have been implemented to address the impact of the disease, Dr. Persaud said.
In this regard the National TB Programme through the Guyana Chest Society commenced an initiative intended to improve knowledge, attitudes and to modify behaviours relating to risk and control of the disease among members of the public. A forum was held at Project Dawn, Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown, last week to target members of the sports fraternity and those drawn from Faith-Based Organisations. Similar sessions were held in Mabaruma, Region One and were slated for Bartica this week.
“The effort that we are making with the Guyana Chest Society is to really get the public involved because one of the gaps that we found is that because TB requires intensive and dedicated efforts to treatment, lots of support is needed from the home, the family and the communities,” Dr. Persaud noted. He pointed out that unless the public is sensitised about the disease, the health sector would only be able to provide a partial solution to the problem.  With support from Global Fund, the CMO said that efforts are being made to first address stigma and discrimination directed to people with the disease and to help to build communities’ capacity in terms of knowledge of what they can do to help those infected.

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